Tiran Island by boat: the four reefs, the wreck, and the one thing the itinerary gets wrong
8 min read
Sharm El Sheikh has two big boat days, and almost everyone books the southern one. That is Ras Mohammed, out past the tip of the peninsula. The northern one goes the other way, up the Gulf of Aqaba to the narrows between Sinai and the island of Tiran, and it is a different kind of day in ways the booking pages do not make obvious.
You can choose from 27 boat trips, from €24.26.
What the strait actually is
The Gulf of Aqaba narrows here, and the shallow water in the narrows has grown four reefs. Dive-the-World names them and explains where the names come from:
There are 4 reefs in the channel - Gordon, Thomas, Woodhouse and Jackson - which were named after the British cartographers who first mapped the area.
The same page puts the strait at “14 km (1½ hrs) northeast of Sharm El Sheikh” and explains the thing that defines the diving and the snorkelling here:
It is the presence of these 2 relatively shallow passages that cause the unpredictable strong currents that characterise the diving here.
Hold on to the word unpredictable. It comes back below, and it is the single best reason to pick one of these trips over the other.
You do not land on Tiran
The itinerary on the Tiran Island cruise contains a line reading “Tiran Island – Visit, Snorkeling”, and it is easy to read that as going ashore. You do not. The same reference page says it plainly:
Tiran Island and neighbouring Sanafir Island are now part of Saudi Arabia and going ashore is not permitted.
So “Tiran Island” on these listings means the water around it: the boat anchors at the reefs in the strait and you get in there. Nobody is hiding this — it is simply that a word like visit means something different at sea than it does on a coach tour, and it is worth knowing before you picture a beach.
If a sandbank to stand on is what you actually want from a boat day, that is White Island on the southern trip, and it is covered in Ras Mohammed and White Island by boat.
The wreck on Gordon Reef
The photograph at the top of this article is not a stock image of somewhere else. It is the Loullia, and it is the landmark of the strait.
On 29 September 1981 the cargo ship ran aground on the northern edge of Gordon Reef while sailing in ballast from Aqaba towards Suez. The crew stayed aboard and tried to refloat her; the ship was abandoned on 2 October and written off. The Red Sea Wreck Project
She is still up there, listing on top of the reef, breaking apart slowly, and she is the plainest proof that the water here is shallow enough to be dangerous to a ship and good for a snorkeller at the same time. You see her from the deck without getting wet. For a lot of people she turns out to be the best part of the day.
The trip in figures
| Trip | From | Rating | Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tiran Island cruise, snorkel & dive with lunch | €42.30 | 4.6 | 541 |
If you would rather have a boat to yourselves, the private tours page covers the range.
This trip has a record of 541 reviews to read, and it is the one the rest of this article is about.
What is included, and the fee to check
On this trip the description confirms hotel pickup, the air-conditioned transfer to the marina, two snorkelling stops with the crew’s guidance and a buffet lunch on board; the inclusions also name a snorkelling instructor, life jackets, drinks and a bathroom and shower on board. The same list carries a line reading “Ras Nasrani entrance fees” — check on the booking page whether that fee is included or payable on top.
Ras Nasrani is the headland on the Sinai side, north of the resorts. It is not Ras Mohammed. The southern boat days name a Ras Mohammed national park fee instead — one listing quotes it at 10 US dollars for one package, another at €5 — and that is a different fee for a different protected area. If you are comparing a Tiran day against a Ras Mohammed day, you are not comparing like with like on this line.
An introductory dive and a full dive both appear on the list with “(if option selected)” beside them. That phrasing does the same work it does across this whole category: it belongs to particular booking options, not to the tour. Open the options before you decide the price.
See the Tiran Island cruise and its options
Six to eight hours that add up to nine
The listing gives the duration as 6 to 8 hours. The leg-by-leg itinerary on the same page runs: half an hour in the van, two hours at the first stop, half an hour cruising, an hour and a half at Tiran, half an hour cruising, an hour and a half at the second stop in the open Red Sea, and two and a half hours cruising back.
Add those up yourself before you book — they come to nine, more than even the upper end. This is not a scandal and it is not unusual; durations on booking pages are frequently the crossing time or the time at sea rather than door to door. It matters because people plan a dinner for the evening of a “six-to-eight-hour” trip. Treat the sum of the legs as the number you plan around, and confirm the exact pickup time before the trip, as this listing asks you to.
Bring a passport, not a copy
One line on this listing does not appear on the southern trips:
Please bring your passport or ID for the marina security check
Tiran trips leave from a marina close to a strait with an international border running through it. Take the actual document. On several Ras Mohammed listings a copy is named as acceptable; here the wording is not that specific, and a security desk is not the place to find out which reading applies.
The rest of the what-to-bring list is short and predictable: sunglasses, swimwear, a towel, sunscreen.
Why this is not the first day of your holiday
Go back to unpredictable strong currents. On a good day the strait is calm and the reefs are among the best known within reach of Sharm without a liveaboard. On a bad day the same water moves, and a current you cannot see from the deck is a genuinely unpleasant surprise if you have never used a mask before.
Dive-the-World calls Gordon Reef “the easiest of the reefs to dive in terms of experience/ability levels” — note that this is a statement about diving difficulty, and the four reefs are not interchangeable in this respect.
So: if this is your first time with a mask, do the gentle version first. Snorkelling in Sharm for the first time explains why the shore here drops away immediately, and the 39 snorkelling trips from €12.22 include much shorter and much calmer days. If you already dive, or you are certain in open water, Tiran is the better half of the two big boat days, and the 13 diving trips from €22.50 will take you deeper into it.
When we would not book it
If the day is windy and you have one boat day left, take the southern trip or the road option — the strait is known for its unpredictable strong currents. If nobody in your party is a confident swimmer, the reefs here are not the place to find out. If you are travelling with small children, nine hours between a van and a deck is a long time; the shorter alternatives are in Sharm El Sheikh with children.
And if the image of a desert island with a beach is what sold you the idea, book something else, because that island is Saudi Arabian territory and you are not going to set foot on it.
