The flight to the boarding port is the one part of the Naora experience where the pre-booking guidance matters most and where the most avoidable problems arise. Not because the flights are complicated, the flights to most Naora boarding ports are straightforward connections from the major European and international hubs.
But because the specific details of the boarding port, the recommended arrival timing, and the luggage allowance for the offshore sailing kit are the details that the standard flight search does not surface and that the member who books without them occasionally discovers too late.
The boarding ports on the Naora circumnavigation range from the major international airports: Bodrum via Milas-Bodrum Airport, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Papeete Faa’a, Bali Ngurah Rai, to the regional airports that require the connection through the hub: Hiva Oa in the Marquesas via Papeete, specific Indonesian island airports via Denpasar or Jakarta, Aqaba via Amman.
The pre-boarding specifies the airport code, the recommended hub connection, and the airlines that provide the most reliable service on the specific routing at the time of year the leg departs. This information changes with the schedule seasons and is updated for each member’s specific leg.
The Luggage Question
The member arriving for an offshore sailing leg arrives with different luggage than the member arriving for the beach holiday. The offshore kit, dive equipment if you are bringing your own, the layers for the tropical night and the boots for the wet deck, typically requires the checked bag allowance rather than the carry-on optimisation that the experienced traveller defaults to.
The low-cost carrier with the restrictive baggage policy is the wrong choice for the offshore sailing boarding flight regardless of the ticket price advantage it offers over the full-service carrier with the generous allowance. The Naora guidance specifies the recommended allowance for the leg’s climate and activities so the flight booking decision is made with the luggage reality in front of it rather than discovered at the check-in desk.
Book the flight with the margin you need: the checked bag for the gear, the arrival the evening before the departure, and the routing through the hub airport that the pre-boarding package recommends rather than the routing through the alternative connection that saves forty euros and adds a two-hour transit in an airport that the connection requires you to clear security twice.
The forty euros is not the saving it looks like when the connection is tight and the second security queue is long. Book it correctly the first time.
The Naora team is available to review the routing options before the booking is finalised.
