Amalfi Coast Itinerary: A 7-Day Crewed Yacht Week

The week starts at Mergellina. Ten minutes from the airport, tucked under the Posillipo headland with the Castel dell'Ovo silhouette across the bay — the marina you've seen in every photograph of Naples ever taken. Your crew meets you at the slip with cold drinks and the chart briefing. The chef finishes provisioning while a steward settles your luggage into cabins and walks you through the boat. (Larger yachts above 75 meters embark instead at Marina di Stabia twenty-five minutes south of NAP — same welcome, bigger boat.)

By late morning the captain is slipping lines. Twelve nautical miles southwest across the Bay of Naples to Procida — the smallest and most underrated of the bay's islands. The afternoon's a quiet shakedown reach: the Posillipo cliffs falling off the stern, the pastel waterfront of Marina Corricella growing on the bow. Warm air, blue water, the city already gone. The kind of opening leg that resets your nervous system inside the first hour.

Procida has none of Capri's intensity and none of Ischia's spa traffic. The fishing fleet still comes in here at dusk. The yellow-and-pastel houses turn up in every Italian-cinema postcard from the 1950s. The captain anchors at Marina di Chiaiolella — the protected bay on the island's southwest side — and the swim platform comes off the transom. Your first dinner is on board at anchor: the chef's welcome plate, a Campanian white from the lower slopes of Vesuvius, the lights of Marina Corricella across the water as the harbor settles.

A short 5-to-7-nautical-mile hop takes you from Procida to Ischia, the largest of the Bay of Naples islands and the one with the longest history of being visited specifically for its water. The thermal springs that seep out of Mt. Epomeo's volcanic flanks have been drawing Romans, Bourbons, and twentieth-century film directors to Ischia for two thousand years, and the spa culture is still the island's calling card. Your captain's choice of anchorage shapes the day — Casamicciola for its better-protected bay and easier tender access to the thermal complex at Negombo, or Forio on the western coast for the late-afternoon sun and the view back across the bay toward Procida.

If your group wants the spa morning, the standard play is a private booking at Negombo or Poseidon Gardens — both are walk-from-the-tender, both have a dozen pools at different temperatures terraced into the hillside, and both are open through October. If you'd rather stay on the boat, the snorkel kit comes off the swim platform and the chef sets a long lunch on the aft deck with the shoreline drifting past. The water in May, June, and September is in the low 70s; by mid-July it's pushing 80°F.

Late afternoon, the captain repositions to the Castello Aragonese — the medieval fortress sitting on its own islet off the eastern shore of Ischia, connected to the main island by a stone causeway. It's been continuously inhabited for 2,500 years, fortified into its current shape under the Aragonese in the 15th century, and it's the visual marker most charter clients carry away from Ischia. Dinner is on board at anchor, the silhouette of the Castello off the bow as the lights come on along the causeway.

Today is the longest passage of the week — an open 18-nautical-mile crossing south from Ischia to Capri across the Bocche di Capri, the wide channel that separates the Bay of Naples from the Amalfi side. Your captain plans it around the morning forecast. In settled June and September weather it's a smooth two-hour run; in shoulder months with weather behind it the crossing is timed to the breeze direction. Either way it's the only meaningful piece of open water on the week, and most weeks it goes by during late breakfast on the aft deck.

Capri appears on the bow as a single steep limestone wall, then resolves into the two harbors on either side of the island — Marina Grande on the north shore (the working harbor and the only marina that takes overnight stern-to berths up to 60 meters), and Marina Piccola on the south side under the Faraglioni rocks (a sand-bottom anchorage in 6 to 10 meters, sheltered from the north only). Your captain's choice depends on yacht size, weather, and how the next morning is staged. Either way the photographs everyone wants come on the way in: the captain holds station off the Faraglioni for ten minutes while the tender comes around for the angles, and the famous arch-passage between Faraglione di Mezzo's two rocks happens only when the sea is flat enough.

The strategy for Capri starts now. The day-tripper ferries from Naples and Sorrento land between 9:30 and 11:00 in the morning and clear out between 16:00 and 18:00. Your captain's plan is to be in the harbor by mid-afternoon, get you ashore for a quiet stroll up the funicular to the Piazzetta around 17:00 once the cruise crowd has thinned, dinner at Mammà off the Piazzetta or at L'Olivo up in Anacapri (the only two-Michelin-star room on the island, booked weeks in advance), and back aboard for a quiet night at the Marina Grande quay or at anchor at Marina Piccola.

Capri's reputation for being crowded comes from the day-trippers, and the yacht is the cheat code for getting around them. The standard play this morning is up early — chairlift to Monte Solaro at 8:00 AM before the first ferry from Sorrento has landed. The chair runs from Anacapri to the highest point on the island in twelve minutes, and from the summit you can see the whole Amalfi Coast laid out south and the Bay of Naples north. By 9:30, when the day boats are coming in, you're back at Anacapri for an espresso and a walk through Villa San Michele — Axel Munthe's villa-and-garden, built into the ruins of one of Tiberius's chapels in 1896, with the cloister open through October.

Late morning, the tender drops you back at Marina Piccola where the captain has anchored in 6 to 10 meters on sand. Lunch is on board at anchor — the chef's spaghetti alle vongole or the day's catch from the Capri fish market grilled on the aft-deck plancha. Pasta-by-the-water in Italy isn't a clichรฉ, it's the right thing to do. After lunch the swim platform is open: snorkel along the cliff base, or let the captain bring the tender around to the Grotta Verde and the smaller sea caves on the south side that the day-tripper boats don't reach.

The afternoon belongs to the Blue Grotto if conditions allow — a tender drop at the cave mouth on the northwest side of the island, and one of the grotto's wooden rowboats through the 80-centimeter opening. €18 per person, payable cash to the oarsmen, closed when the swell is up. By late afternoon the day boats have cleared and the island settles. Dinner is your call: Da Paolino under the lemon canopy at the foot of Monte Solaro (booked weeks ahead during peak season), Mammà off the Piazzetta, or back on the boat for an evening at anchor with the Faraglioni framing the cockpit.

A short 5-nautical-mile hop east takes you from Capri to Nerano, the bay tucked behind the tip of the Sorrento Peninsula and the lunch capital of this coast. The captain anchors offshore in 8 to 15 meters of sand, and Lo Scoglio runs its own wooden tender from anchored yachts to its terrace at the foot of the village — the same boat made famous by Stanley Tucci's "Searching for Italy." The order is set in stone: spaghetti alla Nerano (invented at Maria Grazia further down the beach, but Lo Scoglio's version is the one that keeps people coming back), grilled day-boat fish, a Greco di Tufo from the cellar. Booked weeks ahead in summer; the concierge holds the table.

After lunch the swim platform is open in Recommone Bay just east of the main beach, sheltered from the boat traffic and quieter than Marina del Cantone proper. Mid-afternoon the captain repositions for the 8-nautical-mile run east along the coast to Positano. The approach is the angle of Positano most photographs of this town can't reach from shore — the cliff-stack of pastel houses cascading down to Spiaggia Grande, the dome of Santa Maria Assunta with its majolica tile catching the late sun, the cliffs falling vertically into water deep enough that yachts pick up a buoy in the offshore mooring field maintained by the local cooperative.

Positano has no marina — yachts up to 50 meters pick up a buoy 300 to 400 meters offshore and tender guests in to the wooden jetty at Spiaggia Grande. The captain coordinates with the cooperative on arrival; reservations matter in peak season. Dinner is on shore tonight: La Sponda at Le Sirenuse for the one-Michelin-star room with the lemon-tree-and-candlelight terrace (reservations open 60 days out at 3:00 PM Italy time and book within minutes), or Zass at Il San Pietro a tender ride east of Positano with its own private sea-level dock and a cliff elevator up to the dining room. Back aboard at the buoy by 23:00, lights of Positano stacked above the cockpit.

The shortest day of the week — a 5-to-6-nautical-mile run east along the coast from Positano to Amalfi town. The captain's tempo is slow on purpose. Mid-morning departure with the cliffs of Praiano and the arched stone bridge over the Fiordo di Furore on your starboard side, a possible swim stop in the cove east of Praiano if the morning is settled. Marina Coppola at Amalfi takes yachts up to 35 meters in 8 to 11 meters of water — the most sheltered berth on this stretch of coast, ten minutes' walk from the Cathedral of Sant'Andrea at the top of the town's main piazza.

Amalfi was a maritime republic in the 9th century — a peer of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa with its own currency and trading network across the Mediterranean. The cathedral, dedicated to St. Andrew the Apostle (Peter's brother, one of the twelve), sits at the top of 62 stone steps above the main piazza. The relics were brought from Constantinople in 1206 after the Fourth Crusade and have been in the crypt under the silver-urn altar ever since. The façade you see now is a late-19th-century Norman-Arab-Byzantine reconstruction; the cathedral itself has roots in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Ravello sits seven kilometers up the cliff above Amalfi — about twenty minutes by private driver up the SS373 hairpins. Half-day excursion: tender to the Pennello pier at 9:30, driver up the switchbacks, an hour at Villa Rufolo's gardens (the Wagner-and-Klingsor villa where the Ravello Festival has run every summer since 1953), then a short walk to Villa Cimbrone for the Belvedere of Infinity — the cliff-edge terrace lined with marble busts that turns up in every Amalfi photograph ever taken. Coffee in Piazza Duomo, back to the yacht for a 13:00 lunch, afternoon swim, dinner ashore at Eolo on Amalfi's seafront or Rossellinis at Palazzo Avino back up in Ravello (one Michelin star) for groups making it a longer evening up top.

A last slow breakfast on deck in the shadow of the Amalfi cathedral, a final swim off the swim platform if the morning is warm enough, and the captain slips lines for the 13-nautical-mile run west to Sorrento. The route hugs the coast, passing the Bay of Salerno on the stern, the cliffs at Praiano and Conca dei Marini on the bow. Sorrento's Marina Piccola is shared with the public ferry pier — your tender lands you at the small craft dock and a five-minute walk uphill puts you in the old town for a final cliff-top espresso at the Foreigners' Club terrace.

From Sorrento it's a 14-nautical-mile crossing back across the Bay of Naples to Mergellina, with Vesuvius growing on the bow and the Posillipo headland off the starboard side. Most weeks the captain runs this leg through lunch on board — the chef's farewell plate, a final glass of the cellar's best, and the silhouette of the Castel dell'Ovo growing into focus by the time dessert is cleared.

Disembarkation at Mergellina by mid-afternoon. The crew has the transfer arranged — direct to NAP for guests flying out the same day, or to a hotel in Naples or onward to Rome via the Frecciarossa from Napoli Centrale (just over an hour to Roma Termini). The Pompeii ruins are 30 minutes by car from Mergellina if your flight isn't until evening; many groups make Pompeii the post-charter day rather than the pre-charter one. Your captain and chef will step off the boat already talking about when you're coming back, which is usually how the good ones end.