The cruise to check first
Barcelona has three leisure harbours strung along the seafront: Port Vell at the bottom of La Rambla, the Olympic Port beyond Barceloneta, and Port Fòrum further north again. Boat trips are sold from all of them, and the names on a voucher are easy to confuse.
Everything below comes from the Civitatis vouchers, the operators' sites and Barcelona's tourist board. Where none of them names a metro stop, neither do we.
1Moll de les Drassanes: one quay, four kiosks
The quay runs along the water at Portal de la Pau, directly in front of the Columbus Monument. The tourist board gives metro L3, Drassanes, as the stop for it, plus several bus lines.
Las Golondrinas has its own dock here, with the address Moll de les Drassanes, s/n. The solar catamaran checks in at the Naval Tours stand. The wooden sailing boat with open bar uses the City Sailing Barcelona kiosk. The sunset jazz cruise has the Catamaran Orsom departure point. All four ask you to be there 15 minutes ahead.
The tourist board's page for the solar catamaran is stricter than the voucher: it asks for 20 minutes and says passengers who miss check-in lose the trip. Take the longer margin.
2What goes wrong at Drassanes
The usual mistake is queueing at the wrong kiosk. Several companies sell hour-long boat rides within a few metres of each other, and a voucher from one is not valid at another. Match the operator name on your voucher to the sign before you join a line.
The solar catamaran adds a twist. Civitatis sends you to the Naval Tours stand, while the tourist board calls the boarding point for the same boat the City Sailing ticket office. If you see one name and not the other, ask at the counter and show the voucher.
For Las Golondrinas, check which tour you booked. The 40-minute and 60-minute options leave from the same dock on different boats.
3Olympic Port: Moll de Mestral
The small-group sailing trip boards at Moll de Mestral, one of the piers of the Olympic Port. The voucher says the yachts are at berths 1536, 1537 and 1538, around 100 metres beyond the access barrier, and that you check in at the Boat Trip Barcelona tent.
A marina pier is harder to read than a tourist quay. There are rows of similar boats and several sailing companies use the same pier. The voucher includes a map link and tells you to phone the local operator if you cannot find the boat, so save that number before you leave your hotel. None of our sources names a metro stop for this pier.
4Port Fòrum and other departure points
None of the five cruises compared here leaves from Port Fòrum. It matters anyway, because other companies and other booking sites do sell sailings from there, and it sits at the far northern end of the city seafront.
Orsom's own booking page carries a warning worth repeating: when a sunset cruise is full, the system may show another sunset tour that departs from a different location. Whatever you book, and wherever you book it, read the meeting point on the final confirmation and not on the page you started from.
Boarding points at a glance
| Cruise | Pier |
|---|---|
| Solar-powered catamaran trip | Naval Tours, Moll de les Drassanes · Open pier on the map |
| Las Golondrinas harbour and coast boat | Las Golondrinas, Moll de les Drassanes · Open pier on the map |
| Sunset catamaran cruise with live jazz | Catamaran Orsom, Moll de Drassanes, Portal de la Pau · Open pier on the map |
| Wooden sailing boat with music and open bar | City Sailing Barcelona, Moll de les Drassanes · Open pier on the map |
| Small-group sailing trip with swim and aperitif | Moll de Mestral, Port Olímpic · Open pier on the map |