Yacht charter Naples & Amalfi

The berth is the itinerary

Amalfi, Positano and Capri are small, ancient harbours on a steep coast with no room to expand. They were not built for thirty-metre yachts and there are very few places to put one. In August the demand exceeds the supply by an order of magnitude.

This is not a detail. It is the organising fact of chartering here, and it produces a rhythm you will not find in Greece or Croatia: anchor off the famous places during the day, and sleep somewhere with actual capacity. The yacht spends her nights at Marina d’Arechi near Salerno, at Marina di Stabia, or at anchor off Ischia, and her days off Positano and Capri.

Guests occasionally arrive expecting to step off the passerelle into Positano at eight in the evening. It happens, on the right night, with a booking made months earlier and at a price that will surprise you. It is not the shape of a normal week and any broker implying otherwise has not worked this coast.

Capri, honestly

Capri is genuinely extraordinary and it is also the single most over-planned stop in Mediterranean yachting. Both things are true and the week goes better if you know which is which.

Marina Grande is small, largely given over to ferries and hydrofoils, and has very limited yacht berthing. Most yachts anchor or take a mooring off the island and tender in. The anchorages are deep and shelve steeply, which makes them uncomfortable in anything but settled weather and untenable in a northerly.

The Faraglioni — the three rock stacks off the southern shore — are the thing to see, and they are best at eight in the morning or six in the evening when the day-tripper fleet is not there. The Blue Grotto is a small cave entered by rowing boat in a long queue, and it is the stop most likely to be described later as not worth the two hours.

The advice we give most often: take Capri as a morning and an evening rather than a day, and spend the middle hours at Ischia or Procida, which are twenty minutes away, considerably emptier, and where the food is better.

Where you may not anchor

This coast has a serious network of marine protected areas, and their boundaries constrain the week more than most charterers expect.

The Punta Campanella reserve covers the tip of the Sorrentine peninsula between Capri and Positano — precisely the water you will be crossing repeatedly. It is zoned, with the inner zones closed to anchoring and in places to navigation, and access to some areas requires authorisation. There are further protected zones around Ischia and along parts of the Amalfi shore.

Enforcement is real and the Guardia Costiera are active. As with the Balearic seagrass rules, none of this touches you if the crew know the ground, and all of it touches you if they do not. It is a solid reason to prefer a yacht that works this coast every season over an identical boat repositioned from elsewhere for your week.

August, and the Italian holiday

Italy largely stops in August, and the fortnight around ferragosto on the fifteenth is the peak of it. The entire country that can be at the coast is at the coast.

For a charterer this means the harbours are at their fullest, the berthing rates at their highest, the anchorages off Positano crowded from mid-morning, and restaurant tables genuinely difficult. It also means the coast is at its liveliest, which is what some parties come for. Know which you want.

June and September are, without much argument, the better months here. The sea is warm from late June, the light in September is extraordinary, berths are obtainable, and the same yacht costs perhaps a quarter less. If your dates are movable at all, move them.

May and October are worth considering for a party that cares more about the towns than the swimming. The water is cool, but Naples, Herculaneum, Pompeii and the Amalfi villages are far more pleasant without the crowds, and the yacht becomes a very comfortable way to tour them.

A week that works with the constraint

1. Board at Marina di Stabia or Salerno. Not the romantic option, and the one with the berths and the airport road.
2. Ischia. Larger than Capri, far less visited by yachts, with thermal springs and the Aragonese castle. Anchor at Sant’Angelo.
3. Procida. Twenty minutes on, and the prettiest small harbour in the bay. Genuinely still a fishing town.
4. Capri, early. Faraglioni at first light, swim, and out before the hydrofoils arrive in force.
5. Positano at anchor. Lunch aboard, tender ashore in the afternoon, back out for a quiet night down the coast.
6. Amalfi and Ravello. Ashore for the cathedral and the drive up to Ravello, which is the single best afternoon on this coast.
7. Back north via Li Galli and the Punta Campanella channel, with the last night in reach of the base.

The distances are small — Naples to Amalfi is around thirty nautical miles — so nothing here is a passage. The planning is entirely about where you sleep and what time you arrive.

What it costs

The Advance Provisioning Allowance runs at thirty per cent and the reason is berthing. A night alongside in a small Amalfi-coast harbour in August, for a thirty-metre yacht, is among the most expensive dockage in the Mediterranean, and a week built around marina nights will consume the APA quickly.

Italian VAT applies to the charter fee. Italy operates lease and commercial arrangements that affect the effective rate, and the position should be quoted as a stated line and confirmed in the contract rather than described as included.

The compensation for all of this is that eating and drinking ashore in Campania is better and cheaper than anywhere on the French Riviera. It is the one coast where we regularly suggest guests eat off the boat rather than on it.

Questions