The sailing, in order
The Beagle Channel sailing: what happens, stop by stop
Sea lions, cormorants, a lighthouse, and a sail past the penguins — the shape of a roughly 5.5-hour crossing, in the order the boat actually reaches it.
See Beagle Channel sailing tickets on GetYourGuide ↗The sailing in order
| You see | Approx. time | |
|---|---|---|
| Boarding | Muelle Turístico, Ushuaia | ~9:30am |
| Isla de los Lobos | South American sea lion colony | ~10:00am |
| Isla de los Pájaros | Imperial and Magellanic cormorants | ~10:25am |
| Les Éclaireurs | The lighthouse, close up | ~10:50am |
| Isla Martillo | Penguin colony, sail-past only | ~11:30am |
| Return | Back to the Muelle Turístico | ~3:00pm |
Boarding at the Muelle Turístico
The sailing leaves from Ushuaia's own waterfront pier, the Muelle Turístico on Av. Prefectura Naval Argentina — no coach ride out of town first, just a short walk from most downtown hotels and a check-in at the ticket counters that line the pier. Boats on this route run about 5.5 hours door to door, and the times below are the shape of a typical departure rather than a published minute-by-minute timetable, since GetYourGuide does not publish one for this exact listing.
Isla de los Lobos: the sea lion colony
Around half an hour out of Ushuaia, the boat reaches Isla de los Lobos — Sea Lion Island — a bare rock outcrop where South American sea lions haul out in numbers, big males rearing over the group and pups at the margins. This is one of the larger such colonies in the channel, and it is not seasonal in the way the penguins are: expect sea lions here on almost any sailing, any month.
Isla de los Pájaros: the cormorant cliff
A short run further is Isla de los Pájaros — Bird Island — where imperial and Magellanic cormorants nest in dense colonies on the cliff face, joined by kelp gulls, skuas and other seabirds working the edges. It is a noisier, busier stop than the sea lions, and photographically one of the better ones: the black-and-white cormorant plumage reads clearly even from a moving boat.
Les Éclaireurs: the lighthouse, up close
The boat then closes on Les Éclaireurs, the red-and-white lighthouse built in 1920 on its own small islet in the middle of the channel. It is the sailing's best photo stop and its most misunderstood landmark — see the dedicated guide on this site for the Jules Verne story everyone gets wrong. The catamaran typically slows here rather than at speed, giving a proper look at the 11-metre brick tower.
Isla Martillo: the sail-past, and the wind home
The final wildlife stop is Isla Martillo, where — in season, roughly October to April — the boat sails past the Magellanic and gentoo penguin colony without landing. This is the point worth being clear-eyed about before you book: you watch the colony from the water, at a working distance, not from the shoreline. From there it's the run back to the Muelle Turístico, into whatever wind has built through the morning, arriving mid-afternoon.
What this sailing does not include
Worth stating plainly alongside the stop list: there is no landing anywhere on this route, no guided walk, and no inflatable-boat transfer. Every stop is viewed from the catamaran's deck. If a walk ashore at Isla Martillo is what you actually want, the dedicated guide on this site compares this ticket against the separate full-day tour that does land.
The wind, and why timings shift
The Beagle Channel is open water at the southern tip of a continent, and the operator's own cancellation terms exist because conditions can and do change the plan — a stop can run shorter, the order can shift, or in a genuinely rough spell the sailing can be cancelled outright with a refund. Treat the times above as the shape of a normal day, not a guarantee against a windy one.
Photography, and what actually reads from the boat
A boat in motion is an unforgiving place to photograph wildlife at distance — the lighthouse and the sea lion colony are close enough for a phone camera to do reasonably well, while the cormorant cliff and the Isla Martillo penguins reward a longer lens or a decent pair of binoculars. Bring both if you have them, and don't expect frame-filling penguin shots from this particular ticket.
How the return leg differs from the outbound one
The run out to Isla Martillo is largely about the destinations; the run back tends to feel more like open-water sailing in its own right, since there's no scheduled stop between Martillo and the pier. Some visitors treat the last leg as a chance to sit inside out of the wind and warm up before disembarking; others stay on deck for a last look at the channel and the mountains framing Ushuaia as the boat comes back in.