PLANNING AHEAD
Mark Weiss looks forward to another great summer of cruising aboard his Prestige 680
The last four summers on our beautiful Prestige 680 flybridge, Artemisia, seem to have passed by in a flash. During this time, we have averaged 60 nights on board per year, with around 50 days spent cruising covering just under 1500nm and consuming around 13,000 litres of fuel at an average of 9lt/nm. During the cold dark days of winter, in order to give us something to look forward to, I booked all our flights and marked indelible dates in the diary scheduling our trips from the end of April right up until the end of October. Our routine is now pretty well established, with regular monthly trips of around five days through early summer, then two longer trips of a fortnight each during late July, August and early September, finishing off with two shorter trips at the end of September and October, when we will also close the boat for winter.
However, with Italy and much of Europe in lockdown due to Coronavirus at the time of writing, our first trip at the end of April is now in doubt. Its highlight is meant to be a two-night stay in the port of Capri. In high season, from mid-june to mid-september, the marina is one of the most expensive in the Med at €610 for our 70-foot boat, so we will take advantage of the low season rate of only (!) €240. This ‘saving’ is however negated by those two nights ashore in the fabulous 5-star hotel Caesar Augustus, located high on a cliff-top overlooking the Bay of Naples – a special treat which my wife looks forward to particularly. On trips like this we have been taking more time out to explore ashore and get to know better the sights around our cruising zone of the Amalfi coast and the Bay of Naples as well as the Pontine islands just a bit further north and the Aeolian islands to the south. Inland excursions planned for this year include visiting Ravello whilst in Amalfi, hiking to the roman villa of Tiberius on Capri, taking in some of the thermal spas on Ischia, and exploring the vibrant and chaotic alleyways of the historic centre of Naples itself.
On our annual big voyage south to the Aeolian islands we want to spend more time ashore exploring more of that amazing volcanic archipelago, which remains – apart from the busy main port and town of Lipari and the fashionable Panarea – remarkably unspoilt and uncrowded. In particular we want to venture ashore onto Alicudi, whose precipitous lunar like slopes it was an incredible experience to cruise around last year. This very small barren rock has only some 80 or so inhabitants, and one wonders how they can eke a living.
Elsewhere in the other islands, even in high season, berths are usually available on the day in the few marinas that there are, as with the paid buoys, though we mostly prefer to find a quiet sheltered anchorage where we can enjoy our dinner with a romantic sunset view.
As readers may recall from my last article about using a drone to take aerial photos of our cruising adventures, it ended with a crash. I have since managed to do it again, crashing another DJI Mavic Pro because I wasn’t looking where it was going while flying backwards. This time it was into the mast of a yacht berthed in Lipari. Luckily, I managed to salvage the SD card and save the aerial shots, some of which can be seen here. Hopefully, by the time summer starts, I will have learnt from these expensive mistakes and the epidemic will have passed so that all of us can get back to enjoying our lives again.