Marina Alimou holds close to a thousand berths, making it the largest marina in Greece. It lies about nine kilometres south of the Acropolis, at the northern end of the coastal strip Athenians call the Riviera. Almost every Athens Riviera Catamaran Tour with Fresh Meal Drinks and Swimming leaves from this basin, motoring past fishing caiques and charter yachts before the sails go up. The coast itself runs roughly seventy kilometres, from Faliro Bay to Cape Sounion, where the Temple of Poseidon has stood on its headland since the fifth century BC. Between the two ends lie Glyfada, Voula, Vouliagmeni and Varkiza — suburbs built largely after the war, redrawn again for the 2004 Olympic Games, and still being rebuilt on the old Ellinikon airport site. The tram reaches most of them. The water reaches all of them. What makes Saronic Gulf sailing trips work is geography. The gulf is enclosed, shallow by Aegean standards, and shielded from the worst of the summer meltemi by the Attic peninsula. Aegina sits some twenty-seven kilometres offshore, known for its pistachios and the Temple of Aphaia. Agistri lies beyond it, pine-covered to the waterline. Moni, a small islet off Perdika, is a wildlife reserve where deer and peacocks come down to the beach. Κρουαζιέρα με καταμαράν, as the Greek listings phrase it, covers the same water under a different alphabet. Athens Riviera Catamaran Tour with Fresh Meal Drinks and Swimming tours reach the nearer anchorages within a morning; the longer yacht itineraries take in all three islands. The vessel matters as much as the route. A cruising catamaran carries two slender hulls joined by a bridgedeck, drawing little more than a metre of water. That shallow draught lets a skipper anchor close inshore, in bays where a deep-keeled monohull would stand off. The platform stays level under sail, which is the reason a galley can serve a cooked meal at sea and passengers can eat without bracing a plate against the heel. Trampoline netting spans the bows. Swimming ladders drop from both sterns. Athens Riviera Catamaran Tour with Fresh Meal Drinks and Swimming tickets therefore buy something closer to a floating terrace than a ferry crossing — a slow survey of a coastline Athens has looked at for three thousand years and only recently learned to spend the whole day on.