Cyprus & the Levant

Cyprus sits at the Mediterranean's eastern edge, closer to the Levantine coast than to mainland Greece — a position that has piled three and a half thousand years of passing empires onto one island without ever quite handing it to any of them. The charter infrastructure has caught up only recently: Limassol Marina now takes yachts to 115 metres, and Ayia Napa's new marina has already berthed a 107-metre superyacht. The season runs April to November, one of the longest in the Mediterranean, and every mile of this itinerary stays inside Cyprus's own waters.

“Limassol takes superyachts to 115 metres now — the day that berth opened, Cyprus stopped being a stopover.”

Signature anchorages

A single line runs the south coast from the Cape Greco headland to the Akamas wilderness, roughly eighty miles end to end — a mix of proper shelter and settled-weather calls, close enough together for a relaxed week.

• Cape Greco & Konnos BayRocky headlands inside the national forest park shelter Konnos Bay enough that private yachts and motorboats swing here for a few hours at a stretch; tender round to the Palatia sea caves cut into the cliff at the waterline. A day-anchorage only — Ayia Napa Marina, three miles west, is the overnight base.
• Larnaca Bay & the ZenobiaA ferry that capsized on her maiden voyage in June 1980 lies on her side a mile and a half offshore in 42 metres, one of the world's most-dived wrecks, cargo lorries still lashed to her deck. Dive boats work permanent moorings over the site; the bay itself is open water rather than a snug overnight — more a customs-and-provisioning call (see Marinas & berthing).
• Pissouri BayA natural amphitheatre midway between Limassol and Paphos, cliffs closing one side, a long sand-and-pebble beach sloping gently on the other. Deep enough close in for a big-LOA yacht to lie comfortably, and an established stop for the motor yachts working this coast.
• Episkopi Bay, beneath KourionOpen and west-facing, under the cliffs of a 2nd-century-BC theatre that still seats 3,500 for the region's Greek drama festival most summers. Glorious in settled weather; it picks up swell the moment the wind swings onshore, so treat it as a fair-weather call and tender up to the ruins rather than a place to leave a yacht overnight.
• Petra tou Romiou (Aphrodite's Rock)The sea stack where Aphrodite is said to have come ashore, standing alone off a pebble beach on the open coast between Pissouri and Paphos. No shelter here worth the name — a slow pass at tender-launch range, not an anchorage for the night.
• Paphos Bay & the Archaeological ParkThe harbour itself takes almost nothing — 15m LOA, 2m draft, thirty moorings. Anchor off Kato Paphos or Coral Bay instead and tender in for the House of Dionysos mosaics and the Tombs of the Kings, both part of the UNESCO-listed site inscribed in 1980. A big yacht's business here is ashore, not alongside.
• The Akamas — Blue Lagoon & Lara BayChrysochou Bay, the wide anchorage off Latchi, is the base for both: tender in to the Blue Lagoon's reef-flecked shallows (under 2m at the centre, rock to 5–6m), and pass — don't stop — along Lara Bay, a loggerhead and green turtle nesting reserve where anchoring within 20 metres depth is banned from 1 May to 31 October, fines running past €8,000. The peninsula has no marina infrastructure at all.

The scene

Regattas, wine and opera, strung the length of the season.

Table & stay ashore

No Michelin guide covers Cyprus yet — the island's best kitchens are known by chef pedigree and marina address instead.

Ashore — Troodos & the wine villages

Halloumi country and the mountain interior, an hour or two's drive from any berth on the coast.

A week, sketched

Pair with

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