Nine episodes of this series I've sailed on yachts which — however luxurious — were still yachts. This week was different. ALLURIA is a 36.9-metre Benetti from 2023: ten guests in five cabins, a professional crew of seven including a chef, gyroscopic and zero-speed stabilisers — the kind that hold the yacht steady even at anchor. This is no longer a boat you live on — it's a floating house with a staff whose existence you barely notice for most of the day. And the route? Deliberately contrarian. The Tuscan Archipelago is seven islands scattered between Liguria and Lazio, the largest marine national park in Europe — and waters that eighty percent of yachts pass at night on their way to the Costa Smeralda. Entirely unfairly. We embarked in Viareggio, a few hundred metres from the sheds where Benetti has been building yachts since 1873. ALLURIA began this week in her home town.
Day 1 — Viareggio and the marble mountains
Embarkation in Viareggio → anchorage off Forte dei Marmi
We came aboard in the early afternoon and I spent the first half hour doing nothing but walking. The main saloon, a dining table for ten, a master suite with windows on both sides, a beach club right at the waterline. The crew had unpacked our luggage before we finished the welcome glass of prosecco. We left port and dropped anchor barely a few miles on, off Forte dei Marmi — because on the first evening you don't go far; on the first evening you settle in. We sat on the aft deck with an Aperol Spritz and looked at something you won't see anywhere else in the Mediterranean: the Apuan Alps running straight down to the beaches, scarred white by the marble quarries of Carrara, which in the setting sun look like snow. Michelangelo carved his David from that marble. The chef served dinner on deck — fresh seafood from the morning market in Viareggio, red prawn crudo and spaghetti alle vongole — while the lights of the coastal resorts came on one by one, like a garland.
Day 2 — Wild Capraia
Forte dei Marmi → Capraia (Cala Rossa)
I woke at dawn — on this yacht I have three decks to choose from, but the ritual is the same. Coffee and the top deck: the sea flat as a sheet of glass, the marble peaks turning pink astern, boundless calm. After breakfast we headed south-west into the longest passage of the week — three hours of open water which, thanks to the stabilisers, nobody even noticed. Capraia rises from the sea like a piece of another planet: volcanic, rust-red, wild, four hundred inhabitants, no real hotels, and for a century a penal colony — which is why nobody ever built it up. We anchored off Cala Rossa, a cove cut into the rust-red rock of an old crater. And here the week found its rhythm: we walked down the platform into the water — warm, clear, azure — and spent the whole afternoon alternately swimming and lying on deck. No toys, no jet skis. That water needs nothing. In the evening, grilled fish on the aft deck and a sky so black the Milky Way hung over the mast like a streak of smoke.
Day 3 — Napoleon's Elba
Capraia → Portoferraio → Sansone and Capo Bianco
On the third day we closed with Elba and entered Portoferraio — a harbour the Medici fortified so effectively that no corsair ever took it. Elba is, of course, Napoleon: ten months of exile in 1814, a villa overlooking the sea, and that famous escape after which Europe had to invent Waterloo. We walked the town, visited the Villa dei Mulini, bought olive oil and white ansonica wine from a farmer outside town. But the real Elba began in the afternoon, when we moved around the headland to the beaches of Sansone and Capo Bianco: white pebbles that do something unreal to the water — a band of turquoise so vivid it looks lit from below. Anchor, platform, water. Nobody put shoes on until evening.
From my experience as a broker: the Tuscan Archipelago is the most underrated water on the Italian coast — all my clients know the Costa Smeralda and Amalfi, and most have never heard of Capraia or Giannutri. There is one catch you need to know about: it's a national park, and a big one. Around several islands there are protection zones, entry limits and mooring buoy fields instead of free anchoring — at Giannutri or Capraia you don't stop "where it's pretty", you stop where it's allowed, and in summer the day's places can be allocated well in advance. A good crew, and a broker who knows what to book three weeks ahead, make the difference here between the week in this logbook and a week of admiring the best coves from a distance. That is exactly the part of the puzzle I take on.
Day 4 — Elba's south side, a day in the water
Portoferraio → Fetovaia → Cavoli
On the fourth day we saw no museum at all and it was the best day of the week. We moved to Elba's south shore, to the bays of Fetovaia and Cavoli — granite tongues of rock, pine-covered slopes and water of a colour that looks doctored in photographs. We dropped anchor and ALLURIA's beach club turned into a private beach resort: we lay on the platform with our feet in the sea, swam to the rocks and back, someone read, someone slept, and meanwhile the chef served a lunch a starred restaurant wouldn't be ashamed of — grilled tuna, burrata, peaches with parma ham. Towards evening, when the day boats from Marina di Campo had left, we had Fetovaia entirely to ourselves. The zero-speed stabilisers held the deck as still as a terrace. We sat on the aft deck late into the night; nobody reached for a phone.
Day 5 — Giglio and the evening magic
Elba → Giglio (Campese and Giglio Castello)
On the fifth day we ran three hours south to Giglio — an island the world unfairly associates with a single disaster years ago, and which is one of the most beautiful places on this sea. We anchored in Campese bay, under the red Medici watchtower on its rock, and swam in water that turns copper at sunset — Campese is the archipelago's only bay that opens perfectly to the west. And then came the moment I call "the great magic" in this series, and this time it wasn't a famous harbour town. The crew ran us up by tender to Giglio Castello: a medieval village locked inside walls at the top of the island, four hundred metres above the sea. Narrow stone alleys, cats, the smell of rosemary, a small trattoria serving hunter-style rabbit and local ansonaco wine from the barrel. From the walls we could see ALLURIA below — lit up, motionless on the darkening sea, the only yacht in the whole bay. We rode the tender back in the dark, towards a home glowing at us from the water.
A superyacht is not about metres or the number of cabins. It's about the fact that in seven days, not one of the ten people aboard looked at a watch even once.
— Tomasz Wrzesiński, yacht broker, Monaco
Day 6 — Roman Giannutri and Porto Ercole
Giglio → Giannutri → Porto Ercole (Argentario)
On the sixth day we closed with Giannutri — the southernmost island of the archipelago, a limestone crescent without a single hotel. Two thousand years ago the Roman clan of the Domitii Ahenobarbi — Nero's family — built a seaside villa here whose ruins still step down in marble terraces to the water's edge. We picked up a buoy in Cala Spalmatoio and snorkelled in water so clear you could see amphorae from the deck… all right, stones doing their very best impression of amphorae. In the afternoon, a short hop to Monte Argentario and into Porto Ercole — the town where Caravaggio died in 1610, on the run from a Roman death sentence. Spanish forts above the harbour, a narrow quayside promenade, and this series' obligatory ritual in its Tuscan edition: gelato at the gelateria by the old port, eaten on the sea wall as the fishing boats came home. Bronte pistachio, and fig with honey — I report: it was worth sailing six days for.
Day 7 — A quiet run home along the Etruscan coast
Porto Ercole → Gulf of Baratti → Viareggio
The last day is the longest run of the week, but on this yacht nobody minded. We left early — coffee on the top deck, smooth morning water, the Argentario shrinking astern — and cruised gently north along the coast where, two and a half thousand years ago, the Etruscans shipped iron ore from Elba. At lunchtime we stopped for one last swim in the Gulf of Baratti, beneath the Etruscan tombs of Populonia — the only one of their cities built right on the sea — and then it was just sun loungers, books, and the Apuan Alps growing slowly on the horizon. We entered Viareggio in the late afternoon, tanned and suspiciously quiet. Walking down the passerelle I looked back at ALLURIA and thought: she's home again — and I began working out which of my clients I would tell about Giglio Castello first.
What it costs and what's worth knowing
ALLURIA — a 36.9m Benetti, 2023, 10 guests in 5 cabins (main-deck master with windows on both sides), a crew of 7 including a chef, gyroscopic and zero-speed stabilisers, a beach club and a full tender garage — charters from €75,000 per week in low and mid season to €95,000 in High Season 2026, plus APA of roughly €22,500–28,500 (fuel, provisioning, marinas — everything you actually consume aboard), plus VAT and port fees. Cruising grounds: the whole Western Mediterranean — the Riviera, Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearics, and, precisely, Tuscany.
And one thing you won't read in any brochure: with a superyacht, the price is decided not only by the yacht, but by the week in the calendar, the route relative to the national park's zones, and what the crew manages to reserve before everyone else does. The same ALLURIA, the same week — and two completely different charters, depending on who built the programme and when. That is exactly the moment where I come in. You have the map; a guide is still worth having.
Want to sail this route for real? ALLURIA cruises the whole Western Mediterranean — from the Riviera to Tuscany and the Balearics. See this charter on wyachts.shop → or write to me — I'll check availability and build this week around you.