On The Italian West Coast

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks on the Italian west coast between Porto Venere and Amalfi, including the Tuscan Islands and the Pontine Islands. Our oldest son Lucas and two of his friends joined us in Rome and stayed with us for 12 days. This stretch of coast doesn’t offer too many protected anchorages but the weather was very settled overall and we also spent a few nights in marinas. The islands are all gorgeous.

We met our guests in Rome and took the opportunity to hit some of the major sites, such as the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Pantheon and the Vatican.

View from Saint Peter

From there, we sailed to the island of Ponza.

Here we are at anchor on Ponza. We rented e-bikes and covered pretty much the entire island in a day which was a lot of fun.

We have a BBQ on board which was one of those non-standard options Outremer put in for us. The gas line connects to the standard (large) propane bottle near the salon entrance which is normally used to supply the galley cooktop with gas. On our boat, we have propane only outside for the BBQ (as previously mentioned) so Outremer created this outlet at the bottom left corner of the picture for us and added a fishing rod holder on the inside transom for the BBQ. The BBQ sits on a custom-made metal plate. When not in use, we store it in one of the forward sail lockers. It takes a few minutes to set it up and remove it but it works really well. There are rumors that Outremer will offer this setup on their boats in the future…

On the island of Ischia we spend a night in the marina at Casamicciola to wait out a thunderstorm. It did arrive at night and while we had our boat well secured, our neighbors on a Lagoon Seventy 7 were not so lucky. One of their head sails was torn to shreds at 3am, waking up half the marina, including us. It was incredibly loud – the video doesn’t quite do it justice – and a reminder of the power of the wind and what can happen if you’re not constantly watching out (and sometimes even then).

The following morning Andrea and I went for a run to the Castello Aragonese. It was still closed when we arrived but the espresso and filled croissant they served at the nearby restaurant more than made up for that.

After that, it was onwards to the Marina di Cassano near the town of Sorrento. It’s one of the more picturesque marinas in the Med.

Can you spot Aquila?

This was our launching point to visit the Roman ruins at Pompeii.

Pompeii is incredibly impressive. For the last few years they limit visitors to 20,000 per day and we were worried it would be packed, but the site is so wast and spread out that it wasn’t a problem. It really gives you a glimpse for how Roman life must have felt. Highly recommended!

From there, it was onwards to the world famous Amalfi coast. Is it great? Yes. Is it THAT great? Not sure. For the first time since we’re on this trip the drink prices matched what we’d pay in the Bay Area. We spent a night on a mooring ball in Minori and left the next day.

On our way back to Rome we anchored at the tiny island of Ventotene.

There, we were fortunate enough to witness their annual Festa di Santa Candida, where they launch hand made hot air balloons. It was a magical experience!

Back near Rome, we dealt with a problem with our gennaker.

We removed it from the boat and unfurled it on land. We noticed that the head of the sail wouldn’t unfurl all the way and the foot wouldn’t either, no matter how much tension we put on the sheets. The problem was that the head wanted to go one way (clockwise) and the foot the other (counter clockwise). This apparently can happen if there is not enough tension on the halyard and the torsion cable when the sail is furled. This sail is over 200 m2 and it took all three of us to undo the warps. We furled it manually as well as we could and shoved it back in it’s bag. We’ll find out next time we use it how well we did, but if you have any tips for avoiding this problem (or resolving it if it happens), please let us know!