The Dodecanese
A walled medieval city, a monastery cut into a mountainside, a live volcano you can walk down into — Greece's furthest islands, and a gentler wind than the Cyclades ever give up.
The Dodecanese sit at the Aegean's furthest, most easterly edge — several of them closer to the Turkish coast than to Athens — and are left noticeably calmer by a meltemi that arrives from the northwest a category softer than the wind that clears a Cycladic anchorage by lunchtime. Rhodes supplies the history: an entire medieval walled city, still inhabited, still working. Symi supplies the single best harbour entrance in Greece, tier upon tier of shipowners' mansions climbing the hillside behind it. Kastellorizo, barely two nautical miles from Kaş, supplies the remoteness. Patmos keeps a UNESCO monastery on its hill; Kos keeps an ancient medical school; Nisyros keeps a volcano you can walk into. A week here trades the Cyclades' famous wind for a slower, older stretch of the same sea.
“Sail east from the Cyclades and the meltemi eases by a whole category — the Dodecanese is the Aegean with the volume turned down, and the history turned up.”
Signature anchorages
From a walled medieval capital to a volcano floor — seven calls that rarely repeat a mood twice.
- Rhodes — the Old Town roadstead & MandrakiRhodes Marina, opened in phases since 2016 and still expanding, takes yachts to roughly 120m LOA (length overall); the older Mandraki Marina inside the Old Town's ancient harbour holds around 250 berths to about 72m. Bigger yachts also lie off the walls in the open roadstead (an unsheltered, offshore anchorage) — settled-weather only, exposed if the meltemi swings north.
- Lindos — St Paul's BayA tight, rock-walled cove directly beneath the Acropolis of Lindos, named for a local tradition that the apostle Paul once sheltered here; fair holding on sand, but scaled for tenders and long stern lines rather than the yacht itself — bigger boats anchor off the main beach and run guests in.
- Symi — Gialos harbour & Nimborió BayThe amphitheatre of neoclassical captains' mansions rings Gialos, where charter-scale yachts med-moor (stern-to the quay, anchor out ahead) in 3–6m over a harbour that is highly competitive for space in season. Superyachts anchor instead in Nimborió, an open bay minutes around the point, for depth, swinging room and considerably more privacy.
- Kastellorizo — the harbourNo marina — own ground tackle only, alongside depths of 3–6m shoaling toward the quay, 10–15m mid-harbour for anything larger lying off. Good holding on mud and sand; the harbour entrance is barely 40–60m wide, and the Turkish coast at Kaş is under two nautical miles away.
- Patmos — Skala, below ChoraThe town quay runs shallow — 2.75m at the south end, 3.8–4.25m further along — and the summer mooring buoys are set close enough to cap boats at around 14m LOA; anything larger anchors in the outer bay, 5–10m over sand and mud, exposed in a southeasterly. Chora itself, the monastery town, sits a stiff climb or a short taxi above the water.
- Kos — Kos Town, below the Castle of the KnightsKos Marina holds 265 berths across five piers plus an 80-berth extension inside the harbour itself, to 80m LOA, directly under the walls of the 14th-century Castle of the Knights (Neratzia).
- Nisyros — Pali, for Mandraki & the volcanoPali's small harbour — about ten berths on the north breakwater, thirty-five on the south quay, entrance depths of only 3–3.5m — is the preferred call over Mandraki itself, where yachts are actively discouraged; anything beyond charter-yacht scale anchors off. The volcano bus leaves from Mandraki, a 4km run up the coast.
The scene
Knights, an archangel, a sea cave and a live volcano — the fixtures that have outlasted every occupation of this coast.
The Palace of the Grand Master
At the head of the Street of the Knights, a 7th-century Byzantine citadel rebuilt by the Knights of St John in the 14th — Roman mosaics, medieval armouries, and the Old Town's dominant silhouette. Down at Mandraki, two bronze deer on columns mark the harbour mouth where the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders, is said to have stood before a 3rd-century-BC earthquake brought it down.
Panormitis
The Dodecanese's second-largest monastery, after Patmos, built for the Archangel Michael on the seafront of a tiny bay at Symi's southern tip; its silver-and-gold icon is held the patron and guardian of sailors across the whole island group. Its November and Pentecost feast days still draw pilgrim boats by the thousand.
The Blue Cave (Fokiali)
A sea cave larger than Capri's better-known Grotta Azzurra — some 40–50m long, its interior lit from below by sunlight refracting through the entrance. The mouth is barely a metre high, so tenders go in flat and slow, timed for the stillest water of the morning.
The Cave of the Apocalypse & the Monastery of St John
Halfway up the hill road between Skala and Chora, the grotto where St John the Theologian is said to have received the visions of Revelation; the fortress-monastery above has drawn Orthodox pilgrims since 1088. Both, with the whitewashed hill town of Chora around them, form a single UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Asklepieion & the Plane Tree
A sanctuary to the god of healing on a pine-covered hillside above Kos Town, its terraces built up over the centuries after Hippocrates founded his school of medicine on the same island — the closest thing antiquity left to a teaching hospital. In the town below, a vast plane tree — a little under five centuries old, not the 2,400 sometimes claimed for it, but very likely grown from the original's roots — still shades the square that carries his name.
The Stefanos Crater
A hydrothermal crater some 3,000–4,000 years old, 330m across and still faintly hissing steam and sulphur from vents underfoot; a marked trail leads down onto the crater floor itself. The caldera that holds it is the reason the whole island exists.
Table & stay ashore
Neoclassical waterfronts and quiet luxury, from a sea captain's mansion to a hotel built of glass and water.
Taverna Kostas
Inside the Old Town walls, run by the same family for some 45 years; unshowy, well-priced Greek cooking — moussaka, calamari — in a city where that combination is getting harder to find.
Melenos Lindos
Twelve suites built in early-17th-century Lindian style beside the Acropolis — hand-carved stone, painted ceilings, furnishings sourced from Greece, Turkey and further east.
Hotel Aliki
A shipowner's neoclassical mansion on the Gialos waterfront, built in 1895 and three metres from the water since — family-run, unmistakably Symi.
La Vaporetta
Next door to the Aliki and run by the same family; well-turned seafood and pasta on a quay built for looking at the mansions opposite.
Patmos Aktis
The island's only five-star address, beachfront on the quieter southeast coast; Italian at Cielo e Mare, Greek at the taverna Plefsis.
Kos Aktis Art Hotel
A glass-fronted design hotel on the Kos Town seafront since 2005, several rooms built out over the water; H2O restaurant does much the same trick with dinner.
A week, sketched
One-way, Rhodes to Kos, with the week's one long day given to the furthest point in Greece.
Rhodes
Embark at Rhodes Marina or Mandraki; an afternoon inside the Old Town walls for the Street of the Knights and the Palace of the Grand Master, dinner within sight of the harbour windmills.
Rhodes to Kastellorizo
The week's one long passage, a little over 70 nautical miles east along the Turkish coast — most of the day underway, arriving to the pastel quay-front town by evening.
Kastellorizo
A dawn tender into the Blue Cave, timed for the stillest water and the best light before any other boat arrives; the rest of the day ashore in the smallest, furthest harbour town in Greece.
Kastellorizo to Lindos
The return leg, anchoring by evening in St Paul's Bay beneath the Acropolis of Lindos — a floodlit view worth the day's miles on its own.
Lindos to Symi
Round Rhodes's northern tip to Symi; med-moor or anchor off Gialos, then climb the Kali Strata stair to Chorio for the view back down over the amphitheatre of mansions.
Symi to Nisyros, via Panormitis
A call at the Monastery of Panormitis on Symi's southern tip before crossing to Nisyros; ashore at Pali for the walk down into the Stefanos crater.
Nisyros to Kos
A short final hop to Kos Town — the Castle of the Knights, the Asklepieion and the Plane Tree of Hippocrates — before disembarking at Kos Marina.
Patmos lies a further 45 nautical miles north of Kos — outside a comfortable week that also takes in Kastellorizo, but the natural next call for a charter starting or ending at Kos instead of Rhodes, or the reason to give this water ten days rather than seven.
Pair with
The year, measured
Monthly means at the heart of this water — daily maxima averaged, wind as mean daily peak.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air, day °C | 15 | 16 | 17 | 21 | 26 | 29 | 34 | 33 | 30 | 26 | 22 | 18 |
| Sea °C | 19 | 17 | 17 | 18 | 20 | 23 | 26 | 27 | 26 | 25 | 23 | 21 |
| Wind, peak kt | 12 | 12 | 12 | 13 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 14 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo · 2019–2023 means · sea temperature 2022–2023
The yachts that run these waters
Profiles from the record — introductions via the harbour desk.
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