The Barren Line
Greek ferries are not a tourist product that also carries locals. They are a public transport network serving a hundred inhabited islands — and the August crowd is what pays for the February sailing.
The Blue Star ferry leaves Piraeus at half past seven in the morning and the deck fills with people who are not on holiday. Soldiers going back to a posting. A woman with three crates of tomato seedlings. Two men arguing about a generator. Somewhere below, a lorry carrying everything a small island will eat this week.
Ferries in Greece are not a tourist product that also carries locals. They are a public transport network of about 100 inhabited islands, subsidised by the state on the routes that would never pay for themselves, and the tourists are the reason the network can afford to exist at all.
The barren line
Routes that lose money are tendered by the ministry as "άγονη γραμμή" — the barren line. An operator bids for the subsidy needed to serve islands where two hundred people live, in winter, when nobody is travelling. Without it the smaller Cyclades and most of the Dodecanese would have no scheduled connection for five months of the year, which in practice means no reliable way to reach a hospital.
What pays for it is July and August. A single summer sailing to Santorini can carry two thousand passengers at full fare; the same hull in February carries forty. The islands that complain loudest about overtourism are, in the same breath, entirely dependent on it for the boat that brings their bread in January.
The crowd on the deck in August is what buys the sailing in February. You cannot want one without the other, and most arguments about Greek tourism forget it.
Reading a timetable
Schedules for the coming summer are released in stages from about February and change repeatedly. This is not disorganisation; it is a licensing process that runs on its own calendar, and it is why booking a rigid chain of five islands in advance is a mistake. Book the first hop and the flight home. Buy the rest as you go.
The other variable is wind. The meltemi blows hardest in July and August and cancels sailings — sometimes for two days. Every experienced traveller in the Aegean keeps a spare day before an international flight, and everyone who does not eventually learns why.
Deck class
On a conventional ferry, deck class is the cheapest ticket and gives you the run of the public areas: seats inside, tables, a bar, and the whole stern deck. In summer it is more comfortable than an airline seat and costs about a third of the high-speed catamaran, which is enclosed, faster and has no view worth the name.
The high-speed boats matter when a connection is tight or the crossing is long. Otherwise the slow boat is the better journey, and it is the one where you end up talking to somebody who lives where you are going.