Salerno, Italy Bad weather often leads us to places we would not ordinarily go, and when a storm was brewing near Italy’s famed Amalfi Coast, we ducked Berkeley East into a marina south of Salerno for cover. So what is there to do near Salerno? Visit a buffalo mozzarella farm of course. Lately, we have […]

Palinuro, Italy It seemed like August of 2017 would never end. The heat, the crowds, there was no relief. Then came a stop in Capo Palinuro, on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy where the Cilento National Park meets the sea. The cruising guide said “only in settled weather.” The seas were calm, as was the […]

Cetraro, Italy As we were moving Berkeley East north, we saw smoke in the distance. It looked as though our destination was north of the fire, and the wind was blowing south, so we figured we were clear. Hours later, we could see flames, fire on the mountain behind our planned anchorage. And as we […]

Calabria, Italy All season we had been trying to see more of Italy’s Calabria region. With a wild mountain interior, a long history of poverty, and stories of Mafia activity, Calabria is less traveled and therefore less spoiled by tourism than many other places in the country. We chose Tropea as our base for a […]

Ustica, Italy We had just tied Berkeley East to a mooring ball off Ustica when we heard a troubling noise. Our first reaction was to look for a broken hose within BE’s bilge, then we realized that we had heard this sound before. It was the familiar tune of bubbles, the tiny bubbles of scuba […]

Palermo, Sicily Every country has a dark horse, a place that is seen as the evil stepchild, more trouble, less worthy. For Italy, this is Palermo; a city whose history is clouded by mafia violence, cursed by an unfair stereotype. We too wondered about the questionable reputation of Sicily’s capital, which in all honestly, was […]

Cefalu, Sicily After a couple of weeks of island hopping in the Aeolian Islands (with a few thousand of our newest Italian friends), we were weary from the August crowds and melting from the August heat, so we decided to escape to mainland Sicily. We knew the mobs would be equally as bad on land, […]

Aeolian Islands, Italy We left the Caribbean seven years ago, in part, because we were tired of islands. There’s only so much cobalt blue water and white sandy beaches that one can take. We wanted more to do on land, more culture, more history, so we sailed Berkeley East across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, […]