The Riviera, the Balearics, the Cyclades, Dalmatia and Sardinia are already behind me in this series — but I'd kept putting off the one stretch of Italian coast that shows up in every postcard, because I knew it would feel different from the rest. I boarded SOPHIA in Salerno, gateway to the Amalfi Coast — a 2023 Pershing 9X, 28 metres of pure Italian performance from the Ferretti Group's flagship builder. Twin MTU 16V engines putting out close to 5,720 hp combined, a cruising speed of 32 knots, stabilisers that work both underway and at anchor. Nine berths across four cabins — a master suite, a VIP, a double and a twin with a pullman — looked after by a four-strong crew: an Italian captain, a chef, a Filipino stewardess and a deckhand. This week had a different rhythm from the others in the series, because a Pershing is a boat that keeps whispering "we could go further, we could go faster" — and by day five, I gave in.
Day 1 · Salerno to Positano
Salerno → Positano
We came aboard late in the afternoon in Salerno, and within the hour the coast road above us had already turned into that vertical wall of pastel houses everyone recognises from photographs without ever quite believing it in person. We eased around the point into Positano as the light went gold, and dropped anchor just off the beach. First evening, exactly as it should be: the aft deck, a glass of Aperol Spritz, and the town lighting itself up house by house on the cliffside above us, church dome and all. The chef sent up the first fresh catch of the week — scialatielli with clams and mussels, a chilled glass of Falanghina — and for a while nobody on board said much of anything.
Day 2 · The heart of the coast
Positano → Praiano → Fiordo di Furore → Amalfi
I woke at dawn, which is still my favourite hour on the water — up to the flybridge with a coffee, the sea flat as glass, the coastline still asleep and turning pink before anyone else was awake to see it. We cruised slowly past Praiano and into the Fiordo di Furore, a narrow limestone cleft where a tiny beach hides at the bottom of a 100-metre gorge — we anchored just outside it and swam into the warm, clear water beneath the old footbridge. By early afternoon we were off Amalfi itself, the town that gave the coast its name and once ran its own maritime republic. We went ashore for an hour, wandered the cathedral steps, and did the one thing you cannot skip here: a granita al limone, made from the enormous Sfusato Amalfitano lemons that grow on the terraces above town. It tastes like nothing else, and it should.
Day 3 · Capri
Amalfi → Capri
The third day we crossed to Capri, and I understood within minutes why every yacht on this coast eventually ends up here. We took the tender in close to the Faraglioni, the three limestone stacks rising straight out of the sea, then sent the dinghy round to the mouth of the Blue Grotto — you have to queue and duck through in a small rowing boat to see the blue light inside, but it's worth the wait even from the outside, watching the water glow. SOPHIA anchored off Marina Piccola for the afternoon, and that was the plan for the rest of the day: swim, float, repeat. Dinner on board that evening, grilled scampi and a bottle of white from the Sorrento peninsula, with the lights of the town climbing the cliff above us.
Day 4 · A bay where nothing has to happen
Capri → Baia di Ieranto
We left the fourth day empty on purpose. We crossed back toward the mainland and picked up a mooring at the Baia di Ieranto, a WWF-protected cove tucked beneath Punta Campanella, reachable easily by boat and by almost nobody else. No village, no beach bar, just pine-covered cliffs dropping into water so clear you could count the fish beneath the hull. A mattress on the foredeck, a long swim, a book nobody finished. The Seabob stayed in the garage the whole day — the water here does not need help being interesting.
A broker's note. Three things decide whether a week on the Amalfi Coast goes well, and none of them are on any brochure. First, this coastline has almost no natural anchorages of real depth close to shore — many of the best spots run on mooring buoys rather than free anchoring, and knowing which ones are safe in a swell from the west is a captain's job, not a guest's. Second, in August the road above and the water below are both at capacity — Positano's roadstead can feel like a car park by mid-afternoon, and a good captain reads that and simply moves the plan an hour or a bay over. Third, this stretch of coast is genuinely exposed to afternoon westerlies that build fast in high summer; the difference between a comfortable lunch stop and an uncomfortable one is often called an hour in advance. That's the part I take on myself.
Day 5 · Putting the speed to use — Ponza
Baia di Ieranto → Ponza (Pontine Islands)
Day five is where the Pershing stopped being scenery and started being the point. Ponza, the largest of the Pontine Islands, sits roughly sixty nautical miles northwest — a genuine day-trip destination for almost nothing else on this coast, and an afterthought for a boat that cruises at 32 knots. What would have been a five-hour slog on most charter yachts took us under two. We came into Ponza's crescent harbour past chalk-white cliffs streaked with volcanic colour, tied up for lunch among fishing boats painted in every colour that exists, and took the tender round to the Piscine Naturali — a set of natural rock pools on the island's northern tip where the sea sits still and turquoise inside a collapsed volcanic crater. We had the whole island to explore for an afternoon that most charter guests never get the chance to see, purely because most yachts can't get there and back in a day.
A Pershing doesn't ask you to plan around distance. It asks you to stop thinking a place is too far, because by the time you've finished your coffee, it usually isn't anymore.
— Tomasz Wrzesiński, yacht broker, Monaco
Day 6 · Procida
Ponza → Procida
The sixth day we ran back south to Procida, the smallest and least visited of the bay of Naples islands — pastel fishing houses stacked around the Marina Corricella, laundry lines strung between windows, no cruise ships, no crowds. It's the island Il Postino was filmed on, and it still looks like it. We anchored for the afternoon off the Chiaiolella side, swam off the platform, and ate the last big dinner of the trip on deck as the town's lights came up one balcony at a time — grilled catch of the day and a bottle of Falanghina again, because by now we'd decided we liked it.
Day 7 · Back to Salerno
Procida → Salerno
The last day is always my favourite part of the week, and this one was no exception. Not much distance left to cover, so no rush in the morning — coffee on the flybridge, the sea glassy again, everyone quieter and several shades darker than when we started. I stepped ashore already running through which bay we'd rushed and which one deserved a whole extra day next time. That's usually the sign a trip worked.
What it costs, and what's worth knowing
SOPHIA — the Pershing 9X, 2023, 28 metres, 9 guests in 4 cabins, 4 crew, stabilised at anchor and underway, with a Williams jet tender, a SeaDoo jetski, a Seabob F5SR and water skis in the garage — charters from €79,000 a week in low season, rising to €89,000 in High Season 2026, plus VAT and APA of roughly 30% — so figure another €24,000–€27,000 for fuel, provisioning, marinas and berthing on top. Fuel matters more here than on a displacement hull: at 17 knots she burns around 340 litres an hour, and the Ponza run alone accounts for a meaningful slice of the week's tank. What APA actually covers, and how a charter bill breaks down more generally, I've written up separately.
And here's the part no listing tells you: on most boats, the Amalfi Coast is a week of short hops between crowded anchorages in high season. On a boat that cruises at 32 knots, it's a week where Capri, Ponza and Procida are all realistically on the table without ever feeling rushed — the question shifts from "what can we fit in" to "what do we actually want to do." Working out which is which, for a specific group on a specific week, is exactly where I come in. You've got the map here; it's still worth having someone who's sailed it.
Want to sail this route for real? SOPHIA is based in Italy for the 2026 season, cruising the Amalfi Coast, Sardinia and the Italian Riviera, with the Pontine and Sicilian islands within easy reach. Tell me when you're travelling and with whom, and I'll build the week around you. See this charter →
This is the sixth episode of the "Charter Logbook" series — after the French Riviera, the Balearics, the Cyclades, Dalmatia and Sardinia. Next time, we go further still.