Ponza Island

Cala Inferno is our choice of anchorages

Ponza Island 40°53.76N 012°57.67 E

Its Saturday 30 June and having finally extracted ourselves from Gaeta, we are heading for Anzio under motor at 1100H when the wind fills in and we spot the islands of Zannone and Ponzo part of the Pontine Group off to our port side. 

The game of chance is on and we are soon sailing on a gorgeous breeze, not to Anzio but straight out to Ponza. 

There is a constant stream of motor boats heading out here too from the mainland so we are expecting crowded anchorages. We think Cala Inferno might be right for us on the south eastern side, but lets wait and see. 

The Rib Tents can go in close to the shore and are very luxuriously appointed for sleeping over.

 We drop anchor in the northern part of Cala Inferno - a simply beautiful bay, on sand, in crystal clear turquoise water and very interesting cliffs in front of us. The bay is also occupied by a huge cathedral shaped rock with a hole through it.. Its been a slow trip due to our indirect passage and also our very dirty bottom, made worse probably by ten days anchored in the one spot. 

Summer Style

We are sharing the bay with as usual, wall to wall day trippers in small runabouts, who mostly go home as the sun goes down. We move anchor further in to our choice of places for the night, just in time as the overnighters start to arrive. Before long we are surrounded by anchored cruising yachts, with some exceptions, namely the rib boats with tents on which are very popular here for sleeping over on.

Richard is still recovering and his chest is congested, so no diving for him, but Pippy gets over the side with a set of wooden salad servers (they have a nice straight edge on one side) and begins the hull clean up. The wooden edge is gentle but great for scraping large areas of weed and barnacles off in one sweep. The fish crowd around and gobble up the bits as they float free from the hull.

Its so restful and beautiful here, we spend a couple of days lolling about before making our plans to move on. We have no internet signal so motor up to the port and do a couple of circles around to download some weather reports, then plan to make our passage to Sardinia the next day.