Approaching Capri

As I type this we’re in sunshine, smooth seas 5 knots of breeze and 18d. The island of Capri is ahead about 18 miles where we will anchor for the night. We left Ostia on Monday and went directly to Nettuna and stayed in the marina. This was more “typical” than Ostia which is all quite new. On Tuesday shortly after leaving at 0700, we were stopped in quick succession by three different navy patrol vessels. To the South of Nettuna is a military firing zone and we were told to steam 6 miles West to avoid it. We decided to comply rather than risk being target practice. Tuesday night saw us at the island of Ponza and our first anchorage which all went smoothly. Three police came out to us in a dinghy to inspect our papers. Felt amazing sitting at anchor in a harbour first used several hundred years BC. The small harbour was full of colourful fishing boats and looked like a pitate’s lair of old (which it is). We were the only boat at anchor but apparently in the summer its virtually impossible to get in there.
There’s very few boats around and so far in 3 days we’ve only seen one pleasure boat. Apart from that a number of commercial fishing vessels which has Diane excited thinking there must be some fish to be caught.
Our current priority is to get to Palermo, Sicily a day or two before Easter. This meant that we cut short our plans to visit Rome and will do that another time. Currently the weather is good and having seen a gale here we do want to make some progress while the weather is good. The problem is not only the potentially rough seas but the fact you can’t get into or out of a lot of marinas in adverse conditions. We could have done a direct, non stop route from Ponza to Palermo of about 165 miles or about 24 hours continuous cruising but elected to take the longer but more reassuring coast hopping route as the direct route would have placed us up to 80 miles from the closest land.
Cruising at about 7 knots is quite different to what we’re used to, but great. The main difference is that on a vessel like Envoy you do things while going along, for example typing this or preparing and eating meals. Then there’s the usual “household” chores to do plus particular boat tasks such as making water using the watermaker, doing regular checks on equipment etc. Another difference is the fuel economy of under 10 litres per hour. We have on board internet access interfacing our laptop with a Vodafone mobile with an Italian prepaid sim card. Using this we dial direct to the internet and can send our gmails which is a very cheap and effective system.