A Voyage Along the Tyrrhenian · August
Lady A
Eight days at anchor, between Naples and the islands, the peninsula, and the Amalfi coast.
Eight days at anchor, between Naples and the islands, the peninsula, and the Amalfi coast.
Most people see this coast from the road, catching Positano for four seconds before the cliff swings it out of view. We're going to see it from the water instead.
Lady A is ours for eight days, a thirty-metre Maiora with a crew of four, out of Naples and back. We anchor every night, go ashore when somewhere is worth the trouble, and stay on the boat when it isn't. I've taken care of the wine and the Champagne. Here's where we're going.
Procida is the island most people skip on their way to Capri, and it's the one I'd least want to miss. The fishing village of Corricella has houses stacked up the slope in faded pink and ochre, drawn and photographed for two centuries, more recently as one of Elena Ferrante's settings.
We board in Naples around ten, anchor off Chiaiolella, swim, eat lunch on board, then take the tender round to Corricella for the afternoon, where there's not much to do beyond walk the lanes and watch the boats come in. Dinner back on board.
It's only five miles, so we take a slow morning and a swim before lifting the anchor. Ischia sits on a live caldera, and you see it most clearly at Sorgeto, where hot spring water rises through the seabed into rock pools at the shoreline, so you're swimming in water warm from below and cool from the sea around you. We go in by tender and tie up to the rocks.
Lunch at Il Melograno in Forio, then the tender over to Sant'Angelo, a car-free village on a promontory with a ten-minute walk up to the top for the view over both coasts. Aperitivo back on board, dinner on the boat or in Forio.
This is the day I care most about. Halfway across to Capri we stop at Li Galli, where Homer placed the Sirens in the twelfth book of the Odyssey. The three islands appear out of the haze far more dramatic than their size, and the myth makes sense the moment you see them. Massine bought the main island in 1922 and brought in Le Corbusier; Nureyev owned it until 1993 and added Moorish tiled terraces. It belongs now to Giovanni Russo and Nicoletta Fiorucci, who runs an art foundation there.
I know them, so Camille and I are going to go ashore for a visit while the rest of you swim off the boat. The water there is on the edge of the Punta Campanella reserve and is some of the clearest we'll see.
From there we anchor under the Faraglioni, take the tender through the channel between the stacks if the sea's calm, then along the cliffs to Villa Jovis, where Tiberius ran the empire for ten years. Sunset aperitivo on deck, dinner on board.
The tender leaves at quarter to eight for the Blue Grotto, because the hour is the whole thing. Light comes in under the waterline and turns the cave electric blue. By nine it's a queue of tour boats. At quarter to eight it's ours. Then breakfast, a long morning in the water, and a beach club for the afternoon.
The famous one, on the rocks under the Faraglioni since 1949. We arrive by tender at their dock while everyone else climbs three hundred steps. If we want it, I book today.
Next door, same rocks, same view, family-run. No consolation prize if La Fontelina is gone.
Up near the Blue Grotto, a Michelin star for the seafood. Quieter, better in the kitchen. For a long lunch over a scene.
The western tip by the lighthouse, mostly an Italian crowd, facing west. The one for staying out for the sunset.
My vote is La Fontelina, then Da Paolino for dinner in the lemon groves above town, then Anema e Core, the music club off the Piazzetta where most of Capri ends up around one in the morning.
Two stops before Nerano you won't find in any guidebook. Cala di Mitigliano, a beach with no road to it, reachable only by sea, where we run the tender onto the sand. Then Vetara, a bare rock on the edge of the marine reserve where hardly anyone fishes, with the best snorkelling of the trip, fifteen to twenty metres of visibility on a calm day.
Lunch at Maria Grazia in Nerano, where in the 1950s the owner invented spaghetti alle zucchine alla Nerano, now on menus in New York and Tokyo. We order that. The afternoon after lunch goes nowhere on purpose, which is the part of a trip like this the boat actually pays for.
On the way we stop at the Bagni della Regina Giovanna, a rock pool formed where a Roman villa half collapsed into the cliff, with columns still in the water. We come in by tender through the gap. Then we run slow along the whole Amalfi cliff face with everyone on deck, the villages set into cliffs that look like they shouldn't hold them.
At Positano we go straight to Arienzo by tender, a private cove with a DJ through the afternoon, champagne service, open until six. Aperitivo back on board, then up to the Le Sirenuse terrace for a drink before dinner. Dinner at Next2, and if anyone's still going, Music on the Rocks, a club built into the cliff at the main beach.
Amalfi was a maritime republic in the ninth century, in the same league as Venice and Genoa, until a tsunami in 1343 ended it. The Duomo survived, with five hundred years of styles layered on top of each other. Buy colatura di alici before we leave, the fermented anchovy sauce the local monks worked out eight hundred years ago.
Then Furore, where a cliff that looks solid opens into a narrow gorge and the tender goes inside, and Grotta dello Smeraldo, where light through an underwater opening turns the whole cave green. We end at Cetara, a working fishing village, swim through the afternoon, and eat at Al Convento by the harbour. Good chance it's the best meal of the week.
The last day is the run back, thirty-five miles, leaving Cetara around eleven and into Naples a little before two, with a final swim at anchor before we go.
Between a negotiated discount and moving the dates off peak-August pricing, we're chartering this for well over €25,000 less than it normally costs.
The APA (Advance Provisioning Allowance) is a float for everything we use during the week — fuel, food, drinks on board, harbour fees. I've put fuel at about €6,000 for this route and the boat's real consumption, leaving roughly €8,400 for food and the rest. Whatever we don't spend comes back to us at the end. The crew tip, customarily around 10% of the charter, sits on top and we settle it separately. The wine and Champagne I'm taking care of myself.
Two days off the boat are worth budgeting for on their own. Everything else ashore is lighter, and several days are spent entirely at anchor.
Roughly €1,310 per person across both days, drinks and food included. These are real numbers, not floors — a long lunch with rosé and a proper night out get there honestly. Everything else we eat ashore is far lighter, and the at-anchor days cost nothing beyond what's already in the APA.
All of it sells out for the season, so these get booked this week.
See you on board. — V.
Lady A · Naples to Naples · August