Italian Islands Cruise
We picked up guests south of Rome at Nettuno Marina June 16th and left straight away for the Pontine Islands doing a fly-by of Palmarola to check out the impressive arches in the cliffs. We continued on to anchor north of Ponza Harbour. The town is a picture of pastel and white coloured buildings with many small boats moored around its shore. Around the coast are many grottos and spectacular cliffs. Next stop was Isola Venotene with its Roman harbour hewn out of the rock and the small quaint town behind. One mile across the water is Isola San Stefano with its disused prison. The whole island is a reserve now with authorised access only.
It was then a 50 mile hop down to the green island of Ischia and its impressive castle before heading on past the beautiful town on Isola Procida with its white, pink and cream cubic houses rising up to the Castello on the cliff tops. We then motored across the bay of Naples to Marina di Stabia. From here the guests and some crew visited the ancient ruins of Pompeii, which were buried in AD79 when Mt Vesuvius erupted.
That afternoon the wind picked up and we headed for the famous island of Capri. After a few attempts of finding somewhere to anchor out of the swell we gave up when given the news that the marina had made room for us. We spent 2 nights in Capri exploring the incredible blue waters around its coasts and the maze of tiny streets through its town.
The winds died and we had a 10 hour motor down to Stromboli to view its eruptions both by day and night. The natural fireworks display it put on at night was very impressive especially from so close. In the morning we continued on through the Aeolian Islands to Panarea where we took a tender journey around exploring its rocky coast. The next island was Salina with its vineyards and quaint towns and then on to Lipari to stop for lunch and a swim and a visit by dolphins. We continued on past the historic town of Lipari and anchored on the southern shores of the island looking across at the impressive Gran Cratere on Isola Vulcano. Four of us did an early evening dash across to Vulcano and climbed to the summit of Gran Cratere for a spectacular view of all the Aeolian Islands at sunset. To the south we could also see Mt Etna smoking away.
In the morning we headed south through the Messina straits to anchor below the old town of Taormina. The guests spent a day exploring this area and the next day went on a tour up Mt Etna to the summit at 10900 feet. This involved a bus, cable car, a 6WD truck and finally hiking.
We then headed further down the east coast of Sicily to Siracusa and the old town of Ortigia. Being moored stern to the town of Ortigia made it easy to explore its narrow streets and enjoy its many ice cream shops and restaurants. We were also very close to the ancient Greek and Roman ruins of Neapolis.
The guests left from here and Timoneer left 2 days later.
“JC” John Cornish
