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only 52 seconds. It'll put you in the right mood! You
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Like most would-be but never will-be sailors, I am moved by these lines from Tennyson's Ulysses:
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows, for my purpose holds
to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars…
I suppose that's
as long as I don't have to do the furrow-smiting,
myself, but it has a nice ring to it. It was, then, in
this spirit of meek adventure that I eagerly boarded the
good ship Down East, a 5.5 ton,
26-ft fiber-glass auxiliary sloop with twin keels
(image, above right), built by Westerly in England,
owned and sailed by Captain Bill for a trip from up
here (Naples) to down there (Scario, in the Gulf of
Policastro, almost to the ends of the earth or at
least to the ends of the Campania region of Italy (see
map, right —
the route marked by the black line from start to
finish is about 90 nautical miles/166 km).
Day
1: We started at Nisida (image, left), a very
historic small island just outside the bay of Naples,
in the bay of Pozzuoli (both of which together
constitute the gulf of Naples). As you sail out and
around the island to head south, you see the island of
Ischia and its tiny
companion, Procida, off the western end of the gulf.
At this point, you have a choice: either hug the
Posillipo coast back to the NE in the direction of the
city of Naples or sail straight out to the SE towards
the island of Capri and the narrow strait that
separates it from the mainland (the end of the
Sorrentine peninsula). Turning back in towards Naples
has a lot to recommend it. You sail along the fabled
Posillipo cliffs (Virgil lived here!), today the site
of some of the most luxurious villas in Naples. It's a
string of rocky coves and little boat harbors taking
you into the Mergellina
harbor just a mile from the commercial port of
Naples; you will have had a nice sail, but now you
will have to head back out, due south, taking you
across the commercial shipping lanes in and out of the
main port; thus, since our goal was to get out of the
gulf of Naples, cross the gulf of Salerno to the third
and last gulf in Campania, the gulf of Policastro, we
chose the shortest route, aiming straight across to
that tiny slit of water between Capri and the
mainland. I say 'we' —there
were three of us: Capt. Bill, Pasquale (the mechanic,
who could fix anything), and myself (the helmsman—aaarggh! The helm, you say! Indeed, I
was relieved they were just talking about that
funny-looking steering wheel.)
The run across the bay of Naples is
spectacular. If you want, you can stop anywhere at Capri. That is tempting. You
can spend days there. Years, really. Some have done
that, but it wasn't for us, so we just took in the
view without going ashore; it really does look just
like this (image right). The main town of Capri is
just to the left of the 'saddle' in the middle. The
sun-lit buildings halfway up on the high point of Mt.
Solaro on the right are the sister-town of Anacapri,
with many stories all her own to tell (for example). Then you
sail towards the strait and pass beneath the height of
the east end of the island atop which are the ruins of
the villa of the emperor Tiberius.
There is some
peril in enjoying the view as you head through the
straits. There is a bit of traffic, the currents are
tricky and you might relax just a little too much. The
straits, however, are three miles across and you
shouldn't really run into any rocks; just in case, the
mainland side looks like the image (left). That is
Punta Campanella, the tip of the Sorrentine peninsula.
The structure is one of the old Saracen
Towers of which there are still many hundreds
strewn along the coast lines and islands of southern
Italy as you move down the Tyrrhenian sea, around into
the Ionian along the bottom of the boot and then up
again into the Adriatic. Sicily has them, as well, as
do the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily. They were put
in place during the centuries of ferocious raids from
the sea, first by Arab and, later, Ottoman raiders —fierce pirates
with names such as Khayr Ad-Din, alias "Barbarossa" —Red Beard.
The beacon/lighthouse station at Punta Campanella was
established in 1846 and, like most stations today, is
automated. Had we chosen to sail to starboard around
Capri instead of along the calmer leeward northern
side, we would have seen what I believe is the only
lighthouse in these waters with a real human tending
it, the Punta Carena lighthouse
at the SW tip of the island of Capri. It was built in
1866 and is
beautiful.
Rounding Punta Campanella puts you in the gulf
of Salerno. It's a Wizard of Oz moment, the part
where Dorothy steps out of her black & white house
that has crashed down in Oz and where
the film suddenly goes into color. As lovely as the
sail across the gulf of Naples has been, you now are
at the beginning of the Amalfi coast, a jagged line
of immense beauty, cliff after cliff leading past
Positano to Amalfi, where
we moored for the night. The waters and small
islands along the coast are now part of a protected
marine park, but there is something else. This is the land of
the Sirens of Greek mythology, the temptresses
of Ulysses, Jason, and Aeneas. By most accounts our
local waters hosted three: Parthenope (“virgin"),
Leucosia ("white goddess"), and Ligeia
("bright-voiced"). All three dashed themselves into
the sea and washed ashore. Two have given their
names to parts of southern Italy: Parthenope was the
original name of Naples; Punta Licosa is the tip of
the southern end of the gulf of Salerno, still
ahead of us) and the siren Ligeia,
says local tradition, washed up farther south along
the Calabrian coast near what is, today, Lamezia
Terme. In other words, these really are,
if not 'beyond', at least in the middle of, "...the
baths of all the western stars."
Day 2:
Although Salerno, itself, has its own fascinating
history (the warrior princess, Sichelgaita!), it
also has a large port with a lot of traffic that we
chose to avoid. It's a straight run of 26 nautical
miles (49 km) across the gulf of Salerno from Amalfi
to the small port of San Marco just to east of Punta
Licosa, the end of the gulf. It is flat beach and
potentially a smooth sail, almost boring, as long as
you keep your mind on ancient history —here
is where the Greeks founded Paestum, or all this
was part of the independent Duchy of Salerno before
the kingdom of Naples, etc....that kind of
stuff.
Let your thoughts stray to more recent history, however, and your thoughts sour very quickly. This whole stretch was in September of 1943 the site of Operation Avalanche, the Allied Invasion of the Italian mainland in WWII. From these same waters we are sailing through, the Allies landed 190,000 men on the beach we are now staring at. My friend, Herman (r.i.p.) was in that invasion (his accounts are here) and he told me that he pitched his tent in a temple at Paestum, saying "she" would protect him. I said, "Herman, how did you know it wasn't a 'he'? Maybe Jupiter, somebody like that." He smiled: "Well, I guess when it's your war, you can tell it your way." Avalanche was (until superseded by the invasion at Normandy in June of 1944), the largest sea-borne invasion in the history of warfare. The beach was tenaciously defended by 100,000 German troops. Military strategy and common sense tell you that invaders have to outnumber defenders, and with invasions from the sea, invaders have to really outnumber defenders. Two to one is an advantage, yes, but not much. The Germans were not overrun, although they eventually withdrew back towards Naples. Losses on both sides were heavy. The Allies suffered 2,000 dead and 3,500 missing (which, I think, means 5,500 dead). The Germans suffered 3,500 total casualties. Our sail was relatively smooth although we had some heavy rain and unwelcome lightning. As it got darker it got gloomier. Maybe there is still a pall over that stretch of coast. Hard to say. I was glad when we found San Marco and docked.
Day 3: The
run from San Marco out to the lighthouse
(pictured) on the little isle of Licosa (siren
#2!) at the end of the gulf of Salerno is less
than an hour. The lighthouse is from 1951. The
cape, isle, adjacent waters and the entire bulge
sticking out into the Tyrrhenian Sea are part of
the Cilento
and Valle di Diano national park,
one of the most scenic areas in Italy. It's a
run of 27 nautical miles (50 km) to the SE along
the "bulge". The coast was beautiful, as we knew
it would be. It also had a number of busy, if
not highly populated (except in the summer
months) coastal towns such as Acciaroli, Marina,
Pisciotta and Palinuro. That last one is named
for Aeneas'
helmsman, who, spurned by a local girl (there's
a town named for her, too! —nearby
Camerota) threw himself into the sea and
drowned, thus
fulfilling the prophecy that before Aeneas could
ever land on the coast (to found Rome) a member
of his crew would have to be lost. That leg of
the trip exposes you to small towns and even
traffic noise, especially in the summer. You can
watch landlubber insects scurry along in their
motor homes that they probably hauled down from
Germany. The southern tip of that bulge is
called Punta degli Infreschi and when
you round that to head NE for the home-stretch
to Scario, you are in the bay of Policastro.
Then, there is another one of those "moments,"
not exactly like The Wizard of Oz. Maybe
something stranger.
This time
it's serene, even spiritual. You turn to the NE,
around cape
Infreschi, and
time, itself, just disappears. All the roads
that ran from NE to SW to keep those coastal
communities full and happy are now running parallel
to but well inland of the home-stretch
coast. You can't even get to the cliffs above
the water from inland unless you are a
determined hiker. (Yes, there are a few and they
deserve the view, a clear one of the entire gulf
of Policastro over to the other side where the
coast straightens and starts its long run down
to Calabria.) But where you are now sailing,
there is nothing, and today that is a startling
sight. There are some coastal caves (image,
left) that are of extreme interest to
anthropologists because they show evidence of
very early human habitation (see this link)
way back before there were car-horns and roads.
It's all just a very slow instant of respite
from civilization, a beautiful stretch of
nothing. It's not that long a run, but if you
play your sails right, you can make it last.
photo by William C. Henderson
Then you are in
Scario,
the first port town in the gulf. It's big enough
(1100) to have a good small harbor that fills up
with motorized yahoos in the summer and small
enough (1100) to make it seem absolutely empty
10 or 11 months out of the year. It has a nice
lighthouse (shown, left) from the 1880s,
a beautiful seaside promenade, a delightful
church and is almost unknown to people who don't
live there. Most of the tourist trade heads
farther over in the gulf to Sapri (pop. 7,000)
where there is loud music and nightlife. Don't
do that. Stay in sleepy Scario. You'll need the
rest.
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