The Northern Isles by Catamaran: Three Islands, and You Land on Two of Them
8 min read
Four boats leave Grand Baie for the same three islands, and their prices run from €55.01 to €79. The photographs are interchangeable. The days are not.
The three islands are Île Plate (Flat Island), Îlot Gabriel and Coin de Mire — all three named in every listing, which is where the first misunderstanding starts. You land on two of them. The third you sail past.
The thing every listing implies and one operator states
Coin de Mire is the dramatic one: the wedge of rock you can see from the northern beaches, the shape that ends up on the postcard. It is also the one you will not set foot on.
The 7-hour Grand Baie catamaran says it plainly in its own description: the boat passes “as close as possible”, and “setting foot on the island is not done.” The 8-hour cruise treats Coin de Mire as a snorkelling stop on the way home — you are in the water beside it, not on it. The €59 cruise from the same operator as the €65 one puts it the same way: “We do not set foot on the island.”
So the honest description of this day is: two island landings, one sail-past, and a snorkelling stop under a cliff. That is a very good day. It is just not three beaches.
All four listings describe the islands as government-declared nature reserves, and the operators’ own wording is the source for that — treat it as their description of the status rather than as a rulebook you have been handed. What it means in practice on the boats is what the crews tell you on the day.
The price ladder, and what each step is for
| Price | Duration | Boat | Reviews | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Islands cruise | €59 | 7 hours | catamaran, 40–45 people | 4.3 · 602 |
| Grand Baie 3 Islands | €65 | 7 hours | catamaran | 4.3 · 1,274 |
| Full-day Northern Isles | €77 | 8 hours | catamaran Wind Dancer | 4.7 · 2,256 |
| 3 Northern Islands by speedboat | €79 | 6h 30m | speedboat | 4.5 · 294 |
The €77 boat is the most-reviewed offer of the four by a wide margin and carries the highest rating. It is also the longest day, and it is the one with the clearest inclusions.
What the €77 buys, item by item: a mini breakfast — tea, coffee and cake on arrival — a BBQ lunch, all drinks and snacks, snorkelling equipment, and hotel pickup and drop-off. The single stated exclusion is tips. The operator is Passion Oceane Ltee and the boat is called Wind Dancer, which matters at the meeting point: you wait on Grand Baie Public Beach by the swimming area, the catamaran appears at roughly 7.40am, and the captain comes ashore to collect you in a small blue dinghy.
Where the €65 differs, and it is not the hour. On the Grand Baie 3 Islands cruise, snorkelling gear sits on the excluded side of the listing: masks and snorkels are available to rent for a reasonable fee, according to the operator. Drinks are free on board and during lunch — but the listing adds, in its own words, that drinks are not included when you picnic on the island. Bring your own water for the island walk; the operator asks you to.
That boat also gives the lunch a different address. Instead of eating on board, you are ferried by dinghy to Îlot Gabriel for roughly 45 to 60 minutes, then taken on to Île Plate, where the BBQ is served on the island itself. The operator is proud of that — it advertises a pioneering BBQ lunch on the beach of Flat Island — and it is a genuine difference in how the day feels.
What €55.01 gets you is the same operator and a smaller promise. Roughly an hour of free time across the two islands, a BBQ of grilled fish, chicken, sausages, pasta, rice, bread and green salad, unlimited drinks aboard, hotel pickup and drop-off — with the note that a taxi can be arranged instead at extra cost. The listing is unusually candid about the vessel: “Our catamarans are of 40-45 people.” If you have pictured a small boat, that sentence is the one to read twice.
The speedboat is the outlier, and it is the most expensive. €79 for six and a half hours, three snorkelling stops rather than two, and one line in the fine print that decides it for a lot of people: “This tour is outside lagoon and may have waves.” The operator says so again under physical requirements, excluding pregnant women and anyone with a serious back condition for that reason, and adds: if you are not comfortable with speed, choose something else. Snorkelling gear here is “on demand”.
The rules that come from the operators, not from the sea
These are the conditions people find out about at the beach, and they are all published.
- Children under 4 are not allowed on the €77 cruise. The operator gives its reason — “a long hot day out at sea” — and that is the only hard age line on any of these four listings. The others publish no minimum age at all, which means asking rather than assuming.
- Alcohol on that boat is served from lunchtime, not before. Stated as a safety measure.
- Shoes come off before you board. There are bins for them. It is in the Not allowed section as “shoes indoors”, which reads oddly until you realise it means the deck.
- Life jackets are on board and handed out on request. The listing says to ask a skipper and one will be provided. One traveller review from a rough-weather day says none were offered — so ask, at the start, rather than looking for them later.
- Two of the four are not suitable for people with mobility impairments, and the €55.01 listing also names people with epilepsy. The speedboat excludes wheelchair users, pregnant women and people with back problems.
- WhatsApp is not optional on the €55.01 boat. The operator states it is the primary means of communication, asks for a valid number at booking, and publishes a hotline reachable from 6.30am to 10pm.
One more piece of honesty from the €59 listing, and it applies to all of them: “This is not an island expedition but a cruise. There are no guides on the island.” Nobody will walk you round Flat Island explaining it. You get a beach, a lagoon and a couple of hours.
Weather is the one thing nobody sells you
Both Grand Baie operators reserve the right not to sail. The wording on the €59 cruise is worth quoting because it is the fairest version of it: if sea conditions make the crossing impossible, they will not venture out, you will be told, and if rescheduling is not possible they refund.
Read that as the useful warning it is. These islands are 45 minutes to an hour of open water from Grand Baie. Do not put this trip on your last full day — if it blows, you want a second date to move it to, and the month you are travelling in decides how likely that is.
Which one, in one paragraph each
Book the €77 cruise if the group is adults or children of 4 and over and you want the day with the fewest unknowns: gear included, food on board, the longest hours, and by far the deepest review record.
Book the €59 cruise if eating lunch on a beach rather than on a deck is the point, and you are willing to bring or rent a mask.
Book the €55.01 cruise if the price is the deciding factor and a boat of 40-odd people does not bother you.
Book the speedboat only if you actively want the ride, nobody in the party has a bad back, and you accept that the water outside the reef is not the water in the brochure.
And if the reef itself is what you came for rather than the crossing, the snorkelling has its own rules and they are stricter than anything on these boats. Our catamaran pages hold 37 offers from €40 with a median of €60, and the wider island boat trips 90 from €30 — the northern three are one of four completely different days out there, and the east coast version is the one most people book by mistake.
