A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise leaves the old harbour of the main port of Crete and crosses open sea to a bare, rocky island, with swim stops along the way. The wider range of tours in Greece covers the rest of the trip.
This page covers what the cruise includes, how long it takes and when it leaves, the island of Dia, the Cretan wild goat, the starting harbour, the swim and snorkel stops and the questions travellers ask.
What does a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise include?
A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise includes the sail to Dia, a swim and snorkel in a bay, and lunch. The boat is a sailing yacht or a catamaran, and the extras depend on the operator.
Each company builds its Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise a little differently. One operator runs morning and sunset sailings to Dia on a yacht, plus catamaran trips and private charters. Its small-group trips take a maximum of eight people. Guests can snorkel, fish or try paddleboarding.
On that operator’s boats, unlimited drinks include wine, beer, water and soft drinks. Lunch is seafood pasta or pesto pasta. The same operator offers a minivan transfer from the hotel and back. That saves the walk to the port before an early start.
Another operator sails a 50-foot catamaran. Its day cruise includes a Mediterranean lunch, unlimited drinks, snorkelling and fishing equipment, paddleboards and an inflatable sea pool. The boat has toilets, showers and free Wi-Fi. Guests are welcomed with coffee, cake and Cretan bites while the crew explains the safety rules.
A third operator sells one-hour sails, half-day trips and full-day trips to Dia. It also lists sunset cruises, motor yacht tours and catamaran trips, and its catamaran page promises room to dance.
A fourth operator says guests on its sailing boat can relax in the sun. They can also help with the work on board. Its skippers are competition sailors. So a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise can be a quiet yacht day or a lively catamaran day.
Groups can also book a whole boat. The first operator sells a private Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise in three sizes. They hold up to six people, seven to eight, and nine to ten. Each size is sold as a morning or a sunset trip. The catamaran operator sells a private cruise too.
How long is a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise, and when does it leave?
A full-day Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise leaves in the morning. On one catamaran operator’s schedule it lasts about five and a half hours. Sunset sailings leave in the afternoon, and other operators also sell shorter trips.
On that operator’s Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise, guests board at 9 in the morning in Heraklion Port. Lunch is served at 12. The return sail starts at half past 1 in the afternoon. The boat docks again at half past 2.
Its sunset cruise also runs five and a half hours. It sails from 3 in the afternoon to half past 8 in the evening. The operator describes it as a sail toward Dia with a Mediterranean menu. Its private cruise, by day or at sunset, lasts the same five and a half hours.
Another operator lists a different set of times. Its full-day cruises, semi private or private, leave the Venetian port of Heraklion. The two start times are 9 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. A private half-day trip leaves at half past 9. A private sunset cruise leaves at 4 in the afternoon.
That operator says the sail to Dia takes one and a half hours. Guests can spend the crossing in the sun, or join in the work on board.
A third operator offers one-hour sails along the Heraklion coastline, half-day trips and full-day trips. It lists more than one departure time. Check the season before you plan a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise. One operator runs its trips from March to October, daily from Heraklion Port.
What is Dia Island?
Nobody lives on Dia. The island lies 13 km north of Heraklion, in the sea off the north shore of Crete. From end to end it spans 5 km, and it is 3 km across. A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise crosses the sea to reach it.
Officially, Dia counts as part of Elia, a community inside the Gouves municipal unit. One operator gives the distance from the harbour as seven nautical miles. A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise covers that stretch of water.
Seen from the city, the island looks like a giant lizard. Greek myth explains the shape. The tale speaks of a huge lizard that set out to wreck Crete. A thunderbolt from Zeus hit it, and it turned into the island. A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise starts from that same city.
The island has a long record as a harbour. Its old name was Standia, which grew out of the Greek phrase “stin Dia”, meaning “on Dia”. For centuries Dia was the main port of Crete. Ships have anchored in its four southern coves since Minoan times, long before any Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise.
In the nineteen seventies, Jacques Cousteau explored the sea floor around Dia. Ruins of an old harbour turned up in the waters between Heraklion and Dia. A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise sails across those same waters.
Dia belongs to Natura, the network of nature protection areas of the European Union. It is also a protected hunting ground. The breeding population of Eleonora’s falcon there is 300 to 380 pairs. This earned Dia a place among the Important Bird Areas of BirdLife International. A snail, a lizard, and a wild rabbit subspecies are protected too.
Visitors follow three rules. They come for the day, they do not camp, and they leave cars behind. People swim, snorkel, and stroll the beach. The rules apply to every visitor from a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise.
What is the Cretan wild goat on Dia?
The Cretan wild goat, known as the kri-kri, has a light brownish coat and two backswept horns. It lives on Dia, one of three small islands off Crete. A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise visits this island home.
The other two islands are Thodorou and Agii Pantes. The animal also lives on Crete itself. Today it is found only in Greece. It has other names: Cretan goat, agrimi, and Cretan ibex. On Crete, the female is called sanada.
A darker band runs around the neck of the kri-kri. Wild animals keep away from humans and rest through the daytime. They leap well and can scale what look like vertical rock walls. A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise shares the island with a shy animal.
Experts doubt that the kri-kri is native to Crete. It probably arrived with people of the Minoan civilization. Molecular studies show it is a feral domestic goat, not a distinct wild goat subspecies. It descends from the first goats kept in the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean.
By the year nineteen sixty, fewer than 200 kri-kri were left on Crete. Today about two thousand remain, and they are considered vulnerable. Hunters seek them for their meat, and they have interbred with ordinary goats. Hunting them is strictly prohibited.
Archaeological digs have turned up images of this goat, and academics believe it was worshipped in antiquity. It is a symbol of Crete and is widely used in tourism marketing. A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise brings you to one of the islets where this symbol lives.
Where does a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise start?
A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise starts at the harbour of Heraklion, the biggest city on Crete. One operator welcomes guests aboard at Heraklion Port. Another operator names the Venetian port of the city as its departure point.
Crete has its seat of government in Heraklion, which is also the biggest city on the island. Ferries leave this port for Santorini, Paros, Mykonos, Rhodes and Piraeus, the harbour of Athens. The modern harbour works were completed in the late nineteen twenties.
The harbour also has a long past. The name Heraklion goes back to Heracleium, an ancient harbour that served Knossos. Its site lies inside the modern city boundaries, close to today’s port area.
The Koules Fortress guards the mouth of the old harbour. Italian speakers call it Castello a Mare, which means “Fort on the Sea”. Venice raised it in the early sixteenth century, and the fortress has survived in sound shape. Together with the ramparts and the arsenal, it dominates the port area.
One operator calls its departure point the Venetian port. The Venetians did build a fortress in the harbour of Heraklion. So a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise leaves a waterfront that still shows Venetian work.
Meeting arrangements for a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise differ by operator. One operator boards its guests at Heraklion Port, where the crew shares the safety information. It asks for the details of every guest, as Greek naval regulations require. It also arranges transfers to the port on request. Another operator picks guests up at the hotel by minivan and brings them back.
What are the swim and snorkel stops on the cruise?
The boats stop in the sheltered bays of Dia Island for swimming and snorkelling. One catamaran operator anchors in one of the clear, sheltered bays of the island. Its guests get time in the water.
Four coves open along the southern shore of Dia: Agios Georgios, Kapari, Panagia and Agrielia, listed from the west. Aginara, a fifth cove, sits further east. Boats have anchored in the four southern coves since Minoan times. No operator page names its own cove, so these names only show where a boat can anchor.
Each company offers its own water activities. One lists snorkelling, fishing and paddleboarding on its Dia trips. A catamaran operator lists stand-up paddleboards, snorkelling and fishing equipment, and an inflatable sea pool. It adds a diving scooter on request and provides the equipment for the included water activities on board.
On that catamaran operator’s Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise, the bay stop is flexible and unhurried. Guests choose a swim, a snorkel or a rest on deck.
On land, the rules for a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise are simple. Dia accepts day visitors, but camping is not allowed. People swim, snorkel and walk the beach there. Cars stay off the island.
The water between the city and the island holds a piece of history. Underwater exploration in the nineteen seventies located the ruins of an old harbour on the seabed between Heraklion and Dia. That is a plain fact about the seabed, not a promise for every Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise.
Check the operator’s page for the bay and the gear, because every Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise differs.
What else do travellers ask about a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise?
Where is Crete, the island the sailing day starts from?
Crete is the biggest Greek island. Four Mediterranean islands outsize it: Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus and Corsica. Crete has a surface of 8,450 sq km. Measured from west to east, it stretches 260 km. The Peloponnese lies about 100 km north of it.
A Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise leaves from Heraklion, the capital and largest city of Crete, on the north shore.
Which fortress guards the old harbour of Heraklion?
Venetian builders raised the Koules, called Castello a Mare in Italian, in the early sixteenth century. It guards the entrance to the old harbour of Heraklion. Walls up to 8.7 metres thick surround 26 rooms on two floors. The rooms were once barracks and a prison. Others held a bakery, a mill, a church, storage and a water reservoir.
Today the restored fortress welcomes visitors, and a lighthouse tower rises from its northern part.
What are Knossos and the Minoans, close to Heraklion?
Knossos stands on Kephala hill, 5 km south of central Heraklion. The Minoans, a Bronze Age people of Crete, made it their largest centre. Their culture is regarded as the first advanced civilisation of Europe.
The Palace of Minos towers over the ruins. Greek myths tie the site to the Minotaur, and later Greeks remembered its tangled plan as the Labyrinth. The same municipality holds the starting point of a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise.
Does the summer wind change a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise?
The Aegean has a strong, dry summer wind, called the meltemi, that blows from the north. Between late spring and about the middle of September it blows across the sea, with its peak in the afternoon. Near Crete its direction is north-west.
Sailors treat it with care. It comes without warning, even when the sky is clear, and reaches Beaufort force 7 to 8. Certain yachts cannot sail in it, but leisure sailors also value its steady push.
So a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise depends on the weather. One operator cancels a cruise when conditions make sailing unsafe and offers another date instead.
What does an operator’s packing list say about a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise?
One operator’s list for a Heraklion Dia Island sailing cruise names swimwear, sunscreen, a towel and sunglasses. The operator suggests a hat plus a light cover-up. The operator supplies the gear for its included water activities.
The booking confirmation travels with you, printed or on a phone as an email or SMS. Add a jacket or spare clothing, since the weather can change. Guests with allergies are advised to carry their own medication.