Which base is closer to Formentera?

Ibiza town, by a wide margin. From the harbour mouth you are pointed straight down the Es Freus channel and a planing boat is off the northern spit of Formentera in well under an hour. From Santa Eulària you must first run south around the corner of the island, which adds roughly an hour each way on a fast hull and considerably more under sail.

Is Santa Eulària cheaper?

Usually somewhat, on the boat and noticeably on everything around it. Berthing costs less on that side, parking is straightforward, and provisioning is easier and less expensive. The fleet is smaller, though, so if you want a specific size or a catamaran the choice in Ibiza town is far wider and the price difference narrows once you factor in what you can actually get.

Can I leave a car at the marina for a week?

Sometimes, and it is a real question rather than a detail. Santa Eulària has ordinary town parking within walking distance and it is manageable outside the peak fortnight. In Ibiza town, harbour-side parking is limited, paid, and full in August, and some charters include a space while others assume you arrive by taxi.

Does the east coast get bad weather the west does not?

It gets different weather. The prevailing summer breeze is westerly, which makes the east coast the sheltered side most days, but a levanter puts wind and swell straight into it and Santa Eulària is then the uncomfortable option. The west coast has the opposite pattern. On a week charter you want to be able to switch sides, which both bases allow.

Where do most day boats leave from?

Ibiza town and Sant Antoni carry most of the day-charter traffic, for the obvious reasons of Formentera on one side and the sunset on the other. Santa Eulària is quieter, which is also its selling point: the marina is calmer at handover, the queues are shorter and the first hour of your day is not spent in a harbour full of ferries.

Chartering from Ibiza town or from Santa Eulària

The harbour under Dalt Vila has the deepest fleet on the island and the shortest run to Formentera. The marina at Santa Eulària has calmer water, somewhere to park and a coast most visitors never see. Which base suits which week, what each one costs you in transit time, and the day the choice actually matters.

Two charter bases, twenty kilometres of road between them, and a decision that changes your week more than the choice of boat does. The harbour below Dalt Vila and the marina at Santa Eulària sit on the same island and face different seas.

The short version: Ibiza town buys you Formentera and choice, and costs you money, traffic and noise. Santa Eulària buys you a calm start, an easy car and a coast that is not full, and costs you about two hours of transit on the one day you probably want to go south.

What each base reaches

	Ibiza town	Santa Eulària
Fleet depth	The largest on the island, all sizes	Smaller, weighted to mid-size boats
To Formentera, planing boat	Under an hour	Roughly two hours
To Formentera, under sail	2–3 hours	4–5 hours
To Es Vedrà and the south-west	1–1.5 hours	2.5–3 hours
To the east-coast calas	45 min north	On the doorstep
To Tagomago	An hour	20 minutes
Parking near the berth	Limited, paid, full in August	Ordinary town parking, walkable
Harbour traffic at handover	Fast ferries, day boats, tenders	Quiet
Provisioning	Everything, at resort prices	Everything, at town prices

The east-coast line in that table is the one people underweight. From Santa Eulària, Cala Llonga is fifteen minutes, Es Canar and Cala Nova are twenty, the small rocky calas up towards Sant Carles are half an hour, and the island of Tagomago sits off the corner with clear water on its lee side. None of it is famous. On a week charter that is the point.

The harbour under the old town

Ibiza town’s harbour is a working port and it behaves like one. Fast ferries to Formentera and to the mainland come and go on a schedule that does not care about you, the entrance is narrow enough that everything meets in the same place, and in July the water inside is churned all day.

Against that: the fleet is deep, the technical support is better, fuel and spares are close, and you are pointed at the best day trip on the island from the moment you slip the lines. Anyone whose week is built around Formentera and Es Freus should be based here and should not think about it further.

The flat turquoise shallows of the Es Freus channel between Ibiza and Formentera with a channel marker buoy standing in clear water. — From the Ibiza town harbour mouth this is forty minutes away. From Santa Eulària it is most of a morning.

The practical friction is on land. Getting to the pontoon with a week of luggage and a car full of provisions in August is genuinely difficult; the roads round the port are congested, the parking is metered and finite, and the walk from wherever you end up is longer than the map suggests. Ask which berth you are on and how you are expected to arrive.

The marina on the river mouth

Santa Eulària’s marina is purpose-built, protected, and about a five-minute walk from a town that has supermarkets, a chandlery quarter and pavement space. It is noticeably calmer at eight in the morning, and the handover is not competing with three ferries.

The trade-off is geography. To reach the south and west you must first go round the bottom corner of the island, past the airport approach and the salt flats, which on a sailing boat in a summer westerly is a slow beat rather than a scenic cruise. Plan a Formentera day from here as a full day with an early start, or plan it as an overnight.

The other trade-off is the weather that actually affects this side. A levanter — wind out of the east — puts swell straight into the coast between Cala Llonga and Es Canar and makes the anchorages untenable. It is not common in high summer, but when it comes it lasts a couple of days, and the answer is to cross the island by sea rather than to wait.

A small day boat lying to a mooring buoy off a low Ibizan shoreline under flat grey cloud. — Whichever base you use, the mooring buoy is often the only legal option in the busier calas.

What the choice costs

Berthing is dearer in Ibiza town, and that is inside your charter price whether you see it or not. Everything ashore is dearer too: parking, a taxi to the pontoon, a supermarket run, an evening after handover. Over a week for a family, the difference between the two bases in incidental spending is real money, and it is larger than the difference in the boat rate.

Deposits do not vary much by base — they scale with the boat, and the mechanics are the same either side of the island, as covered in what a charter deposit covers.

How to choose in one line each

A day charter with Formentera as the whole point: Ibiza town.
A week with children aboard: Santa Eulària, and accept the transit.
A group of ten or more: Ibiza town, because that is where the larger catamarans actually are.
A first bareboat week in the Balearics: Santa Eulària. Easier handover, gentler water, and a coast where a bad decision costs you an hour rather than a night.
Arriving by car with luggage for eight: Santa Eulària, unless the charter explicitly includes harbour parking in Ibiza town.
A sunset-focused trip: neither. That belongs on the west coast, and being based on the wrong side of the island for it wastes two hours of a three-hour slot.