One of the highlights of a South Bay Pelagos yacht charter is the opportunity to explore the remote and beautiful National Marine Park of Alonissos. Founded in 1992, the NMPA protects the Mediterranean Monk Seal – the most endangered European mammal – as well as dolphins, wild goats and rare seabirds in Alonissos itself, as well as a further dozen tiny islets to the east, all but one of which are uninhabited. There are fewer than 350 Mediterranean Monk Seals surviving, most of them around Madeira and between 50 to 60 in the Sporades.  You may catch a glimpse of one on a Steni Vala Alonissos boat charter. 

Within the marine park, Psathoura has a wonderful, pristine white sand beach that just cries out to be swum from and flat, green Skantzoura has a single empty monastery and rare Eleonora’s falcons and Audoin’s gulls. The island of Pelagos is also known as Kyra-Panayia and is uninhabited save for the caretaker who looks after a monastery belonging to the Meyistis Lavros monastery on Mount Athos that dates from the 12th century and was restored during the 1990s. The island has two excellent anchorages – Planitis in the north-east is a large-landlocked bay surrounded by lush green vegetation and South Bay on the south-west coast of the island. These are some of the only places that anchoring is permitted in the National Maritime Park of Alonissos.