Catamarans Take Over Poros: EMMYS 2026

Poros is one of those places that makes you wonder why people queue for the busier islands. It sits right at the bottom of the Saronic Gulf, so close to the Peloponnese that the channel between the two narrows to about 200 metres, one of the smallest sea straits in Greece. You come in past Galatas on the mainland, the town climbs the hillside in white and ochre up to its little clock tower, and in May the whole strait smells faintly of lemon, because just across the water there's a forest of some 30,000 citrus trees in blossom.

That narrow, sheltered channel is the whole reason the catamaran show ends up here. The water along the front stays flat whatever the wind is doing outside, the boats line up along one long quay that curves with the town, and everything you need, a coffee, lunch, a bed for the night, is a few steps behind you. Athens is only about an hour away. For a show where the job is to climb on and off boats all day, you couldn't really design a better spot.

The East Med Multihull & Yacht Charter Show, EMMYS for short, started out around 2005 as the plainer-sounding Poros Yacht Charter Show and has grown into the East Med's catamaran event. This was the 22nd edition, 7 to 10 May, with somewhere around 90 boats on the quay and a few hundred brokers in town. It's trade only, so no clients, just brokers, crews and owners, four days of inspections, dinners and comparing notes on the dock.

Why it's the cats' show

Catamarans have quietly taken over this part of the market, and a few days in Poros makes it obvious why. The space you get for the length is something a monohull simply can't match, and the layouts get better every year. Between the flybridge, the main deck and the hulls there are so many separate places to sit that everyone can find a corner to themselves, even on the smaller boats. More space also means more room for toys, which matters more to guests every season.

Then there's the stability, flat underway and flat at anchor. Most people who charter a sailing cat aren't really after the sailing, they're after gliding between islands in silence. You get the comfort of a motor

yacht without the fuel bill or the engine noise, which is about as close to a win-win as this business offers.

The thing I usually ask about first -before any of the other toys amenities or features- is whether the air conditioning runs silent off solar and batteries. A Greek summer night can sit at 30 degrees, and the old choice was a hot cabin or a generator humming away till morning. Silent AC solves it, and more boats have it every year. An e-foil looks better in the brochure, but silent AC is what you actually feel at three in the morning. On the bigger cats the generator is usually so far from the cabins that you'd never hear it anyway.

The headline this year was the new Fountaine Pajot 80s, three of them brand new on the quay. They are the clearest sign yet of where this is going: the space and finish of a proper superyacht, on a platform that sits dead flat and gets into the shallow, pretty bays a deeper boat has to admire from a distance.

The standouts

ESPERANCE steals the show, as she tends to. A beautiful cat with an excellent crew, thoughtful touches everywhere and a toy box to match, she's the one people drift back to.

At the other end of the budget, CORALI was the boat that really stood out.

She's a brand-new Lagoon

51, beautifully kept, and her captain George is the sweetest man you'll meet, a keen fisherman and exactly the sort you'd trust with your kids for a week. If you want a really lovely cat without the top-end price, start there. EFKRATI sits in the same bracket and earns it too, down to the Guy Laroche robes waiting in the cabins.

CRAZY HORSE is the power cat for a group of up to 10 who want fast passages, a lot of space and a lot of toys, with a reputation to match. The judges agreed, by the way: her crew took the Best Crew award at the show.

GREY ONE is the one for the adventurous lot, a big sailing cat loaded with toys and activities. LULU,

brand new and based over in the Ionian, is for the client who wants something current and beautiful with a top crew, an e-foil in the toy store and a chef who used to run the galley for the whole Navigare fleet. The boat that surprised me most was KIARA, a Fountaine Pajot Alegria 67 I'd barely noticed last year. This time she was spotless, full of clever new touches, silent solar air conditioning, a Michelin-starred chef in the galley and a captain who'd happily take you fishing in the Cyclades in a full meltemi. Proud owners, and it shows.

And one for a particular kind of guest

HIGH JINKS will give you a wonderful week, but she isn't the boat if you're after a modern cat covered in toys. She's about the sailing and the journey rather than ticking off the destinations, and her crew, who've been aboard a long time, know exactly how to look after the guests who get that. For the right person she's perfect. For the wrong one she'd be a puzzle.

The crews, which is half the charter

The standard of crew this year was the thing that stayed with me. The chef on LULU served finger food built around king crab that I can still taste. On NOMAD, which takes up to 12 guests, a young Greek chef called Dimitris runs the whole galley single-handed and does it brilliantly, and he's good fun to have around the boat besides. And the captains keep teaching me things, even in waters I've sailed for years. The skipper of SUNNY DREAM, a Lagoon 65, carries more fishing gear than most tackle shops; others grew up on these islands and know coves I'd never have found on my own. On a catamaran charter the crew is at least half of what you're paying for, and this fleet is in good hands.

A few days on ALINA

When the show wrapped, I got to do the best part of the job. Frontier Yachting was invited aboard ALINA for a few days, one of those brand-new Fountaine Pajot Power 80s, so fresh from the yard they hadn't finished laying the carpets. We left Poros and cruised down to Spetses, unwrapping water toys and catching up with brokers on the other boats in the bay.

Five crew, led by chef Panos Koumoundouros, a MasterChef Greece winner. His food is like eating at a Michelin restaurant twice a day, and I'm not exaggerating for effect. Here's the part that impressed me most: none of the crew had worked a charter together before, and yet from the first morning it ran like they'd been a team for years. Beds made while we ate breakfast, drinks arriving before anyone thought to ask, a towel handed to you the second you climbed out of the sea.

The boat itself makes the case for these new 80s on its own. At 24 metres with an 11-metre beam, ALINA gives you the living space of a 35 to 45 metre motor yacht and the flat steadiness only a catamaran has at anchor. She sleeps 10 across five cabins, cruises at 15 knots and tops out at 21, which shrinks the hops between islands and leaves more of the day for everything on the toy list. She may head to the Red Sea after this Greek summer, a new and growing charter ground that's ideal for kitesurfing and diving, and her captain was itching to go.

This is the part of the job you can't get from a brochure, or even from a few hours aboard at a show. You only really learn a boat by living on her for a few days, eating what the guests eat and watching how the crew work when no one's performing. It's why I go.

Thinking about a catamaran in Greece?

Walking the Poros docks is part of how we work every year, and it's why our shortlist for a client is never just whatever happens to be first on the list of available yachts. We come away knowing which boats suit which kind of week, which crew we'd put a family with and which ones to quietly leave off the list.

So when you get in touch, we'll start with the simple things: how many of you there are, whether you're after toys and fast passages or quiet bays and long lunches, a rough budget and your dates. From there we can usually narrow it to the two or three cats that will really fit your week, and the crews we'd trust to run it.

Tell me what you're after and I'll find the right one. You can browse the fleet here, or if you're still weighing up where to sail, read our comparison of the Greek charter regions.

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