Catamaran Day to Ile aux Cerfs

You board at Trou d’Eau Douce, on the east coast, mid-morning. For the first ten minutes the boat motors out of the moorings and it feels like any other excursion. Then the engine goes off, the sail fills, and the noise becomes water on a hull.

The lagoon on this side is wide and shallow and improbably clear, and the crossing takes a while on purpose. People end up on the netting at the bow, which is where you should be, flat on your back with the sail above you and the bottom going past underneath.

The boat anchors for a snorkel stop, and lunch is grilled off the stern while you are in the water. It arrives on deck when you come back up: fish, chicken, rice, salad, a bowl of something Creole with more chilli in it than you expect. Rum comes round afterwards, which is a Mauritian custom rather than an inducement.

The afternoon is the island. Ile aux Cerfs is a strip of casuarina and white sand off the east coast, and the honest thing to say is that the public beach is busy. It has been the postcard for forty years. Some boats work the quieter sandbars instead, and some run up to the Grande Rivière Sud-Est mouth to see the waterfall when the water is high enough. Which you get depends on the operator and on the day.

You sail back with the light behind you, which is the part nobody plans for and everybody remembers.

The same kind of day runs from two other coasts, and you choose when you book. From Grand Baie in the north, the boat heads out past Coin de Mire and Ile Plate to Ilot Gabriel, where you walk ashore among its native plants; out there it is open sea, which moves more than a lagoon. From Black River in the west, it follows the coast where dolphins are often seen in the mornings, though nothing is promised, and lunch comes off the grill with the mountains going by.

If the island matters more than the sailing, a shuttle boat takes you across to Ile aux Cerfs instead, for a sun bed on the main beach, parasailing for anyone who wants it, and lunch on the island, which one version serves on the beach itself.

Whichever you choose, it is the standard good day of a week on Mauritius, and it works as well for a family as it does for a couple on honeymoon.

Good to know

• Shared catamarans and private charters are different days. Say which you want early. The good private boats go first in high season.
• Wind decides. The east coast is the windward side, and a boat that stays in on a rough morning is doing the job properly.
• Reef-safe sunscreen, a hat and a shirt for the water. There is no shade on the netting and the lagoon reflects everything back at you.
• Prices, inclusions and the waterfall extension vary by operator. We confirm exactly what your boat includes in writing before you book.
• If half the party would rather not swim, this still works. The deck is the point as much as the water is.