8-Day Bay of Naples and Amalfi Coast Yacht Charter Itinerary with Pompeii

Naples is where this week starts and the city deserves an evening of its own rather than a taxi from the airport to the quay. Capodichino is about twenty minutes from the waterfront. Board in the afternoon, and if there is time before dinner, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale is the best possible preparation for the day that follows. The mosaics, bronzes and wall paintings taken out of Pompeii and Herculaneum are here in the museum, not at the sites, so seeing it first makes the ruins read properly.

Stay on the berth. A first night in Naples gives the crew a clean start and gives you dinner in a city that most charter weeks skip entirely. Pizza in the centro storico is not a tourist box to tick here. It is the reason the dish exists.

A thirty-minute run south brings the yacht to Marina di Stabia, between Torre Annunziata and Castellammare di Stabia. It is one of the largest marinas in the Mediterranean, with around 900 berths, and it happens to sit in exactly the right place: Pompeii, Herculaneum and the villas at Oplontis are all a short drive from the dock. This is the day that makes this itinerary different from every other Amalfi week.

Do one site properly rather than both of them badly. Pompeii is the big one, a Roman town of streets, shops, houses and a forum lying under Vesuvius, and it takes three hours with a guide and a great deal of water in July. Herculaneum is smaller, better preserved and shaded, with upper floors and carbonised timber that survived because the town was buried differently, and it takes about half as long. Groups with teenagers usually do better at Herculaneum. Anyone who has waited thirty years to see Pompeii should see Pompeii. Book a private archaeologist through the crew and go at opening rather than at eleven.

Twenty miles across the bay, broken by a stop. Procida is the small island and the quiet one, and Marina Corricella is the painted crescent of fishermen's houses that ends up on every poster of this bay. It is a working village rather than a resort, it takes twenty minutes to walk end to end, and an hour there is the right amount of time. Anchor off and tender in for lunch.

Five miles further on, Ischia is a completely different proposition: a large volcanic island with thermal springs, a castle on its own islet and enough interior to disappear into for an afternoon. Overnight at Sant'Angelo on the south coast, where the village is pedestrian-only and built around a rock joined to the island by a sand isthmus, or take a berth at Ischia Porto if anyone wants the town. Sant'Angelo is the better night.

Eighteen miles south-east and the longest single leg of the week. Time the arrival for early afternoon, once the first wave of day boats has cleared out of the Blue Grotto and before the evening crowd builds in Marina Grande.

The best of Capri is seen from a tender rather than from the town. Run the cliffs, go through the arch in the middle Faraglione if the sea allows it, and swim under the stacks where the water is deep and absurdly clear. The Blue Grotto is always worth attempting and never worth promising: it closes on any swell and the queue can run to an hour. Up in the town, the Gardens of Augustus are five minutes from the Piazzetta and put Via Krupp and the Faraglioni in the same view. Overnight on a buoy or at Marina Grande.

One stationary day is what separates a week that feels like a holiday from a week that feels like a schedule, and Capri is the right island to spend it on because it has two halves and most visitors only ever see one. Anacapri is the other half: quieter, higher up, and reached by a road that climbs the cliff in switchbacks.

Villa San Michele is the house Axel Munthe built on the ruins of a Roman villa, and its sphinx terrace looks back down the length of the bay. From the village square a single-seat chairlift runs to the top of Monte Solaro, 589 metres, in a little over ten minutes, and the view from the summit takes in Ischia, the Sorrentine peninsula and the Amalfi coast at once. Come down in the late afternoon, swim off the boat, and eat ashore after the last ferry has gone and the island quietly empties out.

Twelve miles east and the coast changes character completely. Positano is the arrival: the town comes into view whole from about half a mile offshore, stacked up its cliff in pink, ochre and white with the tiled dome of Santa Maria Assunta in the middle of it. That view lasts about four minutes if you motor straight to the anchorage, so slow down for it.

Ashore, the town is steep and the lanes are full of linen and ceramics, and an hour is usually enough of them. Lunch is better taken at Da Adolfo in Laurito, a small bay along the coast that sends its own shuttle boat with a red fish on the bow. Anchor off Spiaggia Grande or take a buoy. Positano has no real harbour, which is precisely why arriving by yacht is a genuine advantage here rather than just a nicer way to travel.

Six miles and half an hour, the shortest leg of the week. Amalfi was the first of Italy's maritime republics and was running Mediterranean trade long before Venice did, and the cathedral at the top of the staircase above the piazza is the evidence: Arab-Norman stonework, a bronze door cast in Constantinople, and a cloister that does not look Italian at all. The town behind the square is a single gorge of lanes and it takes about an hour.

The afternoon belongs to Ravello, about 350 metres up the valley behind the town and roughly twenty-five minutes by car. The terrace at Villa Cimbrone is the view everyone has seen in photographs and almost nobody is prepared for in person, and Villa Rufolo's gardens hold the summer concert season. Come back down for dinner. If the group would rather stay on the water, the Fiordo di Furore is three miles west, a crack in the cliff with a small beach and a bridge over it, and it is at its best in late light.

The last full day runs back around Punta Campanella. Nineteen miles to Sorrento, which earns the stop even at the end of a week: the town sits on a cliff above two marinas, Piazza Tasso and the lanes behind it fill an easy hour, and Marina Grande below the town is a fishing village with the best waterfront lunch on this side of the peninsula. If anyone has appetite for one more anchorage first, Nerano is forty minutes round the point and Lo Scoglio sits on the water there.

Fourteen miles across the bay in the afternoon brings the yacht back into Naples for the last night on board. Disembark after breakfast. Capodichino is twenty minutes from the berth, which is the shortest transfer on this coast and the main practical reason to run this week as a round trip rather than finishing on the Amalfi side.