Back to Italy & the Island of Capri

April 20, 2021 Tim Morgan

The sun’s out. Spring is here. It’s time to think about doings in sunny places, and what better way to enjoy sun than on a boat!

Continuing our Italian Odyssey from our previous posts (‘Italy! Let’s start on the Amalfi Coast’, ‘Positano and Amalfi’, and ‘Italy! Sorrento and Massa Lubrense’), we decided to up our game and see the coast by boat for a couple of days.

We love boating anyway, so the chance to see the coast by charter was too good to pass up. We weren’t disappointed. A fabulous day for the six of us to lounge around, drink beer and wine, dine at fine oceanside restaurants and experience fine Italian hospitality. We would all do it again in a heartbeat.

On day one, our captain and host, Elio, was a 23-year old with a 3-year old daughter and 3 years experience piloting charters around the area. Our 32-foot twin screw was clean, well-equipped, spacious and modern. We tooled up and down the coast by Positano and Amalfi and back to Sorrento, mooring at restaurant buoys and being promptly picked up by the skiff that ferried people from their boats to the restaurant’s dock.

To me, life always looks cleaner, simpler and much more wonderful from the water. Maybe it helps the water is 75 degrees, blue as can be with a shoreline of spectacular cliffs, coves, grottos and gravity-defying hotels and homes perched above.

Charters leave every day from the Sorrento Harbor (above) and the little bay of Massa Lubrensa. Mt. Vesuvius looms on the horizon.

Below is Positano from the water. Down by the shore is the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta with its unique tile dome we had seen from the road just two days before. I just love the bright colors.

Cliff homes, exclusive hotels, private sunbathing outcroppings at the base of cliffs accessible only by boat or switchback steps etched from the rock walls. The Italians will make a beach if they can’t find one. There are castles hewn from the granite; a huge cave that dominates the hillside; and the incredible aquamarine water in the grottos and shallows formed when the sun reflects off the sandy bottom.

The island of Capri, dominating our view from Villa Murat, was on the list of must-sees – we just saw it in a different way than we initially anticipated. Our second boat charter was a more modest 27-footer piloted by Francesco, a 26-year old with a 1-year old daughter. He also was in his third season of captaining charters, but had the ambition to buy his own boat during the next off-season and start his own charter service. He said he does this 6 months a year and travels the other six. Our circumnavigation of the island included several leaps into the sea, swimming through grottos in the luminescent blue-green waters, as well as stops along the way for wine and lunch. Francesco was something of a celebrity with women on other boats, as they would swoon and call to him for pictures. We laughed and asked, while he grudgingly complied, if it happened often. He smiled and said, “Ci.” Such a burden to bear.

When we swam into the large grotto beyond the blue hulled boat, our buddy Ron hooped and hollered for several minutes in there. It was worth the praise, but he nevertheless had me laughing about it. Getting back to our boat got a bit interesting as you had to watch for all the other boats that were coming and going.

The Island of Capri is filled with spectacular grottos. The famous Blue Grotto may be the most visited, but it’s also crowded and tide and wind dependent. If you’re a little more adventurous, grottos await around the island for you not just to enter by boat, but to swim into! Those cracks in the base of the cliff behind us in the picture above are entrances to grottos. Too low for boats, the only way in is to swim.

Lunch by the sea from the sea. Nothing better.

There are restaurants only accessible by water. The visiting boats anchor to buoys and skiffs run out to you, load you up and transport you gracefully to the granite docks that are complete with well-placed steps and attendants to assist you if needed. You sit near the water, hear it lapping against the bulkhead and eat seafood freshly caught that morning.

Yes, that’s a road emerging from the forest and clinging to the cliffs as it climbs to the top of Capri

We stopped in Annacapri for lunch. As its name suggests, it’s on the back side of the island from Capri. Happy summer colors, warm waters and seafood as fresh as it gets. Later we rounded the southwest end of the island and ran into these granite haystacks. Drive right through if you have the nerve or go in-between.