Santorini water sports run from the black-sand beaches on the south and east coasts – Perissa, Perivolos, Kamari, Monolithos and Vlychada – and not from the caldera, which is 300 metres deep with cliffs instead of beaches. Jet skis, banana rides, wakeboards, paddleboards, parasails and dive boats all work off that side of the island, best before eleven in the morning while the sea is still flat. Santorini Tours is a local operator running private tours and transfers on the island.
Santorini Water Sports: The Short Answer
Santorini water sports happen on the south and east coasts, at Perissa, Perivolos, Kamari, Monolithos and Vlychada, and not in the caldera. The crater is 300 metres deep with no shallow water and no launch ramps, so everything with an engine or a board runs from the black-sand beaches on the other side of the island.
The santorini water sports menu: jet skis, banana and sofa rides, wakeboarding, water skiing, paddleboards, kayaks, windsurfing, flyboards, parasailing, snorkelling and scuba. What is not: much surf, and any of it in a strong meltemi.
Prices run roughly 40 to 90 euros for a jet ski by the half hour, 20 to 35 for a banana ride, 15 to 25 an hour for a paddleboard or kayak, and 60 to 120 for parasailing for two.
Where the Centres Are
Perivolos. The biggest concentration of santorini water sports on the island, with several centres along the beach and the widest range of equipment.
Perissa. The same long stretch of sand on the other side of the rock, slightly cheaper and busier with a younger crowd.
Kamari. A promenade, sunbeds and a couple of operators, and the easiest base with children. See Kamari.
Monolithos. Shallow, calm and quiet, which suits paddleboards and beginners rather than engines.
Vlychada. Dramatic carved cliffs, a marina, and the place several boat and diving operators sail from.
Not the caldera. Fira, Firostefani, Imerovigli and Oia have no beach and no water sports at all. What leaves from the old port and Ammoudi are boats, not boards.
What You Can Actually Do
Jet ski. The most booked of all santorini water sports, hired by the half hour with a briefing, and in Greece a licence is required for the larger machines while smaller ones are hired under supervision.
Banana, sofa and tube rides. Ten minutes behind a boat, cheap, and the thing children remember.
Wakeboarding and water skiing. Best in the calm early morning before the afternoon breeze fills in.
Paddleboarding and kayaking. The quiet end of santorini water sports: hire by the hour along the south coast, and guided kayak trips run to the sea caves and the red cliffs.
Windsurfing and kitesurfing. Possible on the meltemi days when everything else stops, though Paros and Naxos do it far better.
Flyboard. Ten to fifteen minutes, entertaining, and considerably harder than the videos suggest.
Parasailing. A quiet ride two hundred metres up with the whole island underneath.
Scuba and snorkelling. Volcanic walls, a wreck and 20 to 30 metres of visibility. See diving on the island.
What It Costs
Jet ski, the santorini water sports benchmark. 40 to 90 euros for thirty minutes depending on the machine and the month.
Banana or sofa ride. 20 to 35 each, usually with a minimum number of riders.
Wakeboard or water ski. 40 to 70 for a session with a boat and an instructor.
Paddleboard or kayak. 15 to 25 an hour, or 40 to 70 for a guided coastal trip.
Parasailing. 60 to 120 for two, ten to fifteen minutes in the air.
Flyboard. 60 to 100 for a short session with instruction.
Discover scuba. 70 to 110, and a two-tank boat dive 90 to 140.
Sunbeds. 15 to 30 for a pair, free at many tavernas if you eat there, which is worth knowing before spending a whole day on santorini water sports.
The Wind Decides Everything
The meltemi, which decides every santorini water sports day. The strong northerly of July and August blows for two to four days at a time and closes most powered activities on exposed beaches.
Where it hits. Hardest on the north and east. Perissa and Perivolos, on the sheltered southern side, keep running when Kamari does not.
Morning versus afternoon. Flat water before eleven, chop from about two. Wakeboarding, skiing and flyboards are morning sports here.
The exception. Windsurfers and kitesurfers want exactly the day everybody else has cancelled.
Cancellations. Operators cancel for safety and rebook, and it is worth having a spare day in the week for santorini water sports as much as for a boat trip.
Season. Late May to early October for everything, with June and September the most reliable months.
See the weather month by month.
Safety, Licences and Children
Jet ski licences for santorini water sports. Greek rules require a licence for larger machines. Reputable centres will ask, brief you and keep you inside a marked zone; anybody who does neither is a reason to walk to the next centre.
Insurance. Ask what the centre carries and check your travel policy, because many exclude powered water sports and quad bikes in the same clause.
Age limits. Typically eight upwards for banana rides with an adult, twelve to sixteen for parasailing, and eighteen with a licence for a jet ski.
Life jackets. Provided and worn, and not optional on the boat-towed activities.
Swimming ability. The volcanic beaches shelve quickly and the water is deep close in, so every one of these santorini water sports assumes you can swim.
Sun. The most common injury on the water here is burning, because the breeze hides it.
The one to think twice about. Hiring a jet ski without a briefing on a windy afternoon, which is how the accidents happen.
The Beaches, Ranked for the Water Rather Than the Sand
Perivolos. The best all-round santorini water sports base: the longest run of operators, boats working off the beach, and enough space to keep engines away from swimmers.
Perissa. The same bay north of the rock, cheaper, younger, with beach bars that run into the evening.
Kamari. More organised, more families, fewer engines, and a promenade with everything else on it.
Monolithos. Shallow and calm, the best place for a first paddleboard and the one beach that suits small children.
Vlychada. A marina rather than a resort beach, and the departure point for diving and several boat trips.
Agios Georgios and Exo Gialos. Quiet stretches with occasional equipment and almost nobody on them.
Red Beach and the caldera coves. Beautiful, boat-access only, and not where santorini water sports happen.
See the beaches ranked.
Choosing an Operator
Look for the briefing before any santorini water sports hire. A centre that explains the zone, the throttle and the signals before taking your money is a centre that maintains its machines.
Look at the santorini water sports equipment. Jet skis and boats here work seven days a week for five months. Newer fleets cost more and break down less.
Ask about insurance. Then check your own travel policy for a powered-sports exclusion.
Ask about the deposit. Card pre-authorisations are normal and should be explained before you sign.
Ignore the price alone. The gap between the cheapest and the best santorini water sports centre on a beach is usually ten euros and a great deal of judgement.
Book the boat activities early. Wakeboarding and banana rides depend on one boat, which fills.
What to Bring and What to Leave
Bring to any santorini water sports day. Swimming shoes, a hat with a strap, high-factor waterproof sun cream, a dry bag for a phone and a towel you do not mind losing to black sand.
Bring for the beach itself. Something to walk on hot sand in, because by eleven in July it burns.
Leave behind on a santorini water sports day. Loose sunglasses, jewellery, anything that floats away, and a wallet full of cash.
Valuables. Most centres will hold a bag while you are on the water; ask before you assume.
Cameras. Waterproof housings or nothing. The one certainty of santorini water sports is that you will end up in the sea.
Timing your food. Eat after rather than before. The black sand, the heat and a banana ride do not combine well.
Getting to the Water and Back Again
Almost nobody sleeps where the santorini water sports are, and that is the first thing to plan around. The hotels with the view are on the caldera rim at Fira, Firostefani, Imerovigli and Oia, and the beaches with the engines are twenty to thirty-five minutes away on the far side of the island. That gap is the single most underestimated part of planning a beach day here, because it turns a spontaneous morning into a piece of logistics that has to be decided the night before.
The public bus works and is cheap, running from the Fira station to Perissa, Perivolos and Kamari through the day, but it is a hub-and-spoke system: everything goes through Fira, so a hop from Kamari to Perivolos that looks like four kilometres on the map can take an hour and two buses. In July and August the buses fill, and standing in the aisle with wet hair and a bag of towels after a morning on the water is a poor end to a good day. Taxis exist in very small numbers — the island has around thirty of them for two million annual visitors — and a beach return at five in the afternoon, when every other family is having the same idea, is not something to leave to chance.
Renting a car or an ATV solves the transport and creates the parking problem instead: Perissa and Perivolos both run out of spaces by half past ten in the peak weeks, and the walk back from wherever you did find a space, across hot black sand in the middle of the afternoon, is a real consideration. A private transfer to the santorini water sports beaches removes all of it, which is what most families end up doing once they have tried the alternatives — dropped at the centre at half past nine and collected at whatever hour the day actually ends, with the bags in the car rather than on your shoulder.
Whichever you choose, decide it before you book the activity. The single most common way a santorini water sports morning goes wrong is not the wind, and it is not the operator; it is arriving at half past twelve for a jet ski slot booked at ten, by which time the boat has gone out with somebody else and the sea has turned.
Beyond the Beach Centres
The hired-by-the-half-hour santorini water sports equipment on Perivolos is only one layer of what happens on this water. Underneath the surface, Santorini has a genuinely unusual dive environment: a caldera wall that drops for hundreds of metres, volcanic reefs off Palia Kameni that are still warm from the vents below, a small wreck at Adiavatos, and visibility that regularly runs to thirty metres because there is no river silt anywhere near the island. The fish life is modest, and any honest operator will tell you so, but the geology is not something you see in many places.
Above the water, the sea kayak trips along the south coast reach the caves and coloured cliffs between Vlychada and the Red Beach that no road goes near, and the sailing catamarans that leave from the Vlychada marina and the old port give you the caldera itself, with a swim stop at the hot springs and one at the red cliffs. Those are the two activities most people are actually looking for when they search for santorini water sports and find a list of jet skis, and they are worth knowing about before you spend the budget on ten minutes behind a boat.
If your week has room for exactly one of the santorini water sports, and you have never seen the caldera from inside it, make it the boat rather than the engine.
A Water Sports Day That Works
09:30. Arrive at Perivolos or Perissa while the sea is still flat and the sunbeds are free.
10:00. The engine hour of the santorini water sports day: jet ski, wakeboard or a banana ride, before the afternoon breeze.
11:30. A paddleboard along the shore while the water is still calm.
13:00. Lunch at the taverna behind your sunbeds, which usually makes the beds free.
15:00. The flat hours are over; swim, sleep, or take the parasail, which does not care about small chop.
17:00. Snorkelling off the rocks at the end of the beach as the light goes.
19:00. A shower and dinner inland at Emporio or Megalochori, ten minutes away.
One beach, one morning of santorini water sports and an afternoon of doing nothing, which is the shape that actually works in this heat.
Where It Fits in a Week
No santorini water sports on the boat day. A catamaran in the caldera is already five to seven hours on the water.
Not on the walking day. The rim path and a jet ski in the same twenty-four hours is a lot of sun.
Best paired with. A morning at Akrotiri, which is roofed and cool, then the beach from two o’clock.
With children. Banana rides and paddleboards in the morning, pool in the afternoon, open-air cinema at Kamari in the evening.
With teenagers. This is the day they will remember, and the argument that stops them asking for a quad bike.
On a cruise day. Not realistic. Six hours ashore go on Akrotiri and the villages.
Santorini Water Sports: Frequently Asked Questions
Where are santorini water sports based? On the south and east coasts at Perissa, Perivolos, Kamari, Monolithos and Vlychada. There are none in the caldera.
Why none in the caldera? The crater is around 300 metres deep with cliffs instead of beaches, so there is nowhere to launch and nowhere shallow to ride.
What does a jet ski cost? Roughly 40 to 90 euros for thirty minutes, depending on the machine and the season.
Do you need a licence for a jet ski? For the larger machines, yes under Greek rules. Smaller ones are hired with a briefing and inside a marked zone.
What is the best time of day? Before eleven in the morning, when the sea is flat. The breeze fills in during the afternoon.
When is the season? Late May to early October, with June and September the most reliable months.
Does the wind stop everything? The meltemi closes powered activities on exposed beaches for two to four days at a time in July and August, and the sheltered south coast usually keeps running.
Is there surfing? Not really. Windsurfing and kitesurfing are possible on windy days, and Paros and Naxos are far better for both.
Can children take part? Yes, from about eight for towed rides with an adult, with higher age limits for parasailing and jet skis.
Is snorkelling any good? Yes, on the volcanic rock at the ends of the beaches, with 20 to 30 metres of visibility and modest fish life.
Do you need to book ahead? Walk-up is normal outside August, and worth booking in peak weeks.
What should you bring? Swimming shoes for the pebbles, a hat with a strap, waterproof sun cream and something to walk on hot black sand in.
We Will Get You There and Back
We are a local operator running private tours and transfers in our own vehicles, and the south coast is twenty-five minutes from the caldera villages where most visitors sleep.
Tell us your dates and we will build the beach half of the week around the wind and the rest of it around the hours: Akrotiri before the coaches, santorini water sports while the sea is flat, the wineries after four and dinner inland at nine.
Prices are per vehicle rather than per person, hotel pickup anywhere on the island is included, we guide in twelve languages, and an 80 EUR deposit confirms a date.
See the personalised tour, the private transfers, or contact us.
Every Village and Site on the Island
Any of these can be built into a private day. Each has its own page with what to see and how long to allow.
Caldera villages: Fira · Firostefani · Imerovigli · Oia · Finikia · Baxedes
Inland villages: Pyrgos · Megalochori · Emporio · Mesaria · Karterados · Vothonas · Vourvoulos · Exo Gonia · Mesa Gonia · Pigadia
Beaches: Perissa · Perivolos · Kamari · Vlychada · Monolithos · Red Beach · White Beach · Agios Georgios · Agia Paraskevi
Sites and landmarks: Akrotiri · Ancient Thira · Akrotiri Lighthouse · Nea Kameni · Palia Kameni · Thirasia · Athinios Port
All our tours: All Santorini tours · Full day tour · Sightseeing tour · Personalised tour · North part tour · Horse riding · South part tour · Sunset tour · Shore excursion · Caldera tour · Food experience · Wine tour · Historical tour · Small group tour
Planning and services: Famous sights tour · Private transfers · Transfers to Oia and Finikia · Transfers to other villages · Villages of Santorini · History of Santorini · Tours near you · Languages we guide in · Food and fun tours · Gay friendly tours · Our tour buses · Daily tours · Day tours · FAQ · Gallery · Tour photo gallery · About us · Contact · Blog
