The catamaran that leaves Lloret de Mar at 19:30 is doing something the town's boats have done for eight centuries: leaving from the same short beach, on the same water, for money. Only the cargo has changed. Medieval Lloret sent cork, wine and men to Cuba and the Río de la Plata; the parish church of Sant Romà, begun in 1522, was rebuilt in the 1910s with Modernista domes paid for by returning indianos — emigrants enriched in the Americas. Their money also built the seafront villas along Passeig Jacint Verdaguer. The lloret de mar sunset catamaran cruise with dj and drinks now sails past those same façades, from a coastline that once launched them. The geology explains the rest. The Costa Brava is a drowned granite massif, the Serralada Litoral, breaking into the Mediterranean in headlands and coves too steep for roads. That is why the coast between Blanes and Tossa de Mar is best read from the water. Cala Banys, Sa Caleta with its 1916 castle folly, Santa Cristina and the Els Tres Pins pines are separated by cliffs that a walker on the Camí de Ronda covers in hours and a catamaran passes in minutes. Lloret's own beach, 1.6 kilometres of coarse sand, is only the widest of a long series. Why this matters commercially is straightforward. Tourism reached Lloret in the late 1950s, and by the 1970s the town had more hotel beds than almost any resort in Catalonia. Nightlife followed, then outgrew the shoreline. Moving a sound system onto a multihull — stable, shallow-drafted, with trampoline decks and no rolling keel — solved the noise problem and gave passengers a horizon instead of a wall. Costa Brava catamaran tours were the logical result. Sunset does the last of the work. In August the sun sets behind the Serralada rather than into open sea, so the light comes sideways across the granite, red on the cliffs, while the water east of the boat goes dark first. The Illes Formigues lie south; the Cap de Tossa lighthouse marks the northern limit of the view. Departures run twice weekly, Tuesday and Thursday, 19:30 to 21:30, from Passeig Agustí Font, 2. Bookings for the lloret de mar sunset catamaran cruise with dj and drinks tour open on the same schedule year-round, and the price holds at 35 EUR per adult, five drinks included.