Private Boat Blue Lagoon Malta, Against the Ferry

The two products

Reaching the Blue Lagoon is easy and there are several ways to do it, but they fall into two families. Either you buy a place on a boat that is going anyway, or you book the boat. Everything else about the day follows from that one choice.

A scheduled crossing or a group day trip is straightforward, well organised and requires nothing of you but turning up. A charter puts a boat and a skipper at your disposal for a block of hours, and hands you the decisions that the timetable would otherwise have made.

The comparison table below sets the two side by side on the rows that actually differ. It is worth reading before the prose, because for a lot of visitors one row settles it: either the hour matters to them or it does not, and everything else is detail.

What the freedom actually buys

The most valuable thing is the hour. The Blue Lagoon is transformed by when you arrive, and only a charter will leave early because you asked. That single fact is worth more than every comfort difference between the two kinds of boat put together.

The second is the route. A skipper who is running your boat rather than a timetable can take you to the Crystal Lagoon, along the cave-riddled south coast, or into a small bay he happens to know is empty today. Travellers describe being asked where they wanted to go and whether they wanted to skip anything.

The third is time at a place you liked. On a scheduled boat, the return sailing decides when you leave. On a charter, staying another twenty minutes is a sentence you say out loud.

The caves, which are the clearest difference

Comino's cliffs are hollowed out along their length, and several of the openings are large enough for a small boat to go inside. A charter does this routinely. A scheduled vessel carrying a large number of people to a timetable does not, and cannot.

Travellers name this more often than anything else when they explain why the private boat was worth it. The phrase that recurs is that they saw caves they would never have found, and could never have entered, any other way.

Group size and who is with you

On a charter the group is the people you brought. That changes the whole character of the thing: you can put your own music on, spread out, decide collectively what happens next, and behave like a group of friends on a boat rather than an audience.

It also scales sensibly. Two people get an unusually private day. Six or seven make it feel like a party. A family with teenagers gets a boat where the teenagers can be in and out of the water without inconveniencing forty strangers.

There is a practical limit, of course. A charter boat has a capacity like anything else, and a group larger than that becomes two boats or a different kind of trip. For the usual family or group of friends the size is not the constraint.

What you give up

Catering, first. There is no galley, no bar and nowhere to buy anything, so food and drink are your job. An ice box with ice and drinking water is aboard, which solves the water problem and nothing else. Travellers who bring a proper cool bag eat well; travellers who assume something will be available do not.

Simplicity, second. A charter needs a small amount of organising: a departure block, a rough plan, cash for the fuel contribution on the day. A ferry needs a ticket.

And weather exposure, third. A small boat is more affected by wind than a large one, so a charter is more likely to be moved, shortened or rescheduled on a rough day than a scheduled crossing would be.

Which to choose

Take the ferry if you are one or two people who mainly want to be at the Blue Lagoon, do not mind the hour, and would rather not organise anything. It is cheerful, efficient and entirely adequate.

Take the charter if you are a group, if you want an early start, if the caves and the Crystal Lagoon appeal, or if the crowding is the thing you are worried about. Those four reasons are the whole case, and any one of them is enough.

A note on skippers

One thing a charter gives you that does not show up in any comparison table is a person. On a scheduled boat the crew are managing a crowd. On a charter the skipper is running your day, and if he grew up on these islands he will tell you things about them that no audio commentary contains.

Travellers on this trip mention that repeatedly: local knowledge, the history of the islands, and being taken to a small beach with nobody on it because the skipper knew it was there.

That is not a small thing over four hours. A guided day and a transported one are different products, and the difference is almost entirely down to whether the person driving the boat has any reason to talk to you.

Before you book