Anchoring in Italy

[kingsebi]

Hello,

I have been reading these forums for quite a while and found a lot of valuable information. Much thanks to everybody contributing!

I plan to spend the winter at anchor in the bay of Portoferraio in Elba, Italy. But now I was told that you cannot leave your boat unattended at anchor in Elba (even in whole Italy). Being singlehanded this seems to be quite a challenge. The only sources I could find on the matter are an article on yachting.com and a comment on Navily. I have to admit that my italian is very rudimentary though. Can anybody tell me if this is true? And if so, is it enforced? Maybe some locals around...

Thanks in advance,
Sebastian

 

[Star-Lord]

I have been in Italy for a year now and everyone who anchors leaves their boats unattended to go ashore. Leaving the boat unattended for more than a certain amount of time may be a law? And maybe what you have heard is true! If so - nobody obeys.

Elba may have a separate rule... but Italians are very sensible imho and runs ashore can always be justified!

Navily is great - i have the paid version with weather / swell / and % of agreeability / and it is invaluable in the Med because I have never had to move anchorages so often!

 

[jaba]

It's a bit of a legend in Italy. But did a quick double check & local coastguard command ordered (order 147/2005) that in Portoferraio Bay
"in the event of adverse weather and sea conditions, the pleasure craft must be suitably sheltered with the utmost promptness, duly armed with full crew, if not moored at the quay where permitted and / or provided for the aforementioned units."
In sum: you must not leave your boat unattended in the event of bad weather.
Bylaw attached (Art. 4).
Enjoy Elba

 

[Star-Lord]

It's a bit of a legend in Italy. But did a quick double check & local coastguard command ordered (order 147/2005) that in Portoferraio Bay
"in the event of adverse weather and sea conditions, the pleasure craft must be suitably sheltered with the utmost promptness, duly armed with full crew, if not moored at the quay where permitted and / or provided for the aforementioned units."
In sum: you must not leave your boat unattended in the event of bad weather.
Bylaw attached (Art. 4).
Enjoy Elba

You see! I told you the Italians were sensible. For example during lockdown yachts were allowed entry but had to stay aboard for 2 weeks - unlike many other places who just closed their borders.

 

[MapisM]

I was told that you cannot leave your boat unattended at anchor in Elba (even in whole Italy).

I'm Italian, and I've been boating in Italy for decades, but I never heard of such generalized rule.
OTOH, as was already pointed out (and as I think is reasonable to expect), local restrictions can and do exist.
The reference for them is the Coast Guard website, where the so-called "ordinanze" issued by each Coast Guard command establish all local rules, and their modifications over time.
Unfortunately, several pages of that website are available also in EN, but not these "ordinanze".
Anyway, just in case, this is the relevant webpage.
By selecting the place (like Portoferraio, for instance) in the field "Filtra per comando", you can access all the local rules/restrictions.
But it does take a good understanding of Italian to understand them, I'm afraid...

 

[sailaboutvic]

We spend a lot of years cruising Italian waters and we never had a problem tho now and then some one will come up with the most silly requirement but this happens in most EU country's.
Just this year while moored on the quay in Oibla we was told someone had to stay on board at all times , you only have to look around to see no one was taken any notice .
I think the problem the OP got is if you plain to stay in one spot over winter and the coast guard insists someone has to stay on board your in a bit of a muddle and you have to move .

 

[kingsebi]

Thanks all for clarifying, especially Jaba for the official source. That's exactly the kind of document I wanted to have. Not leaving the boat unattended in bad weather makes sense. So the legend comes from a misinterpretation of the law.

MapisM: That was the problem I had with the website, but don't worry I'm going to learn Italian. Such a beautiful language.

Starlord: In the month I've been in Italy now I've made the same experience: very friendly and sensible people. What you say about the lockdown reminds me of a friends story, who crossed the Atlantic at that time and was rejected in Spain and France, only to find shelter in Genua.

Sailaboutvic: That's my problem. The bay of Portoferraio is the only full protected anchorage around here and if the coastguard insists on me staying on board I have to move on and change my plans.

Anyways, as it seems I got the law on my side I will go for it. Winter in Elba sounds nice!

 

[dgadee]

I have anchored there. My understanding was boats left where ferries might be constrained would be moved. If no one was on board then the coastguard would get the boat moved, at considerable expense. I liked Elba but the crew thought the clothes shops were expensive holiday tat and was glad to move on.

I did have a couple of problems with the coastguard in Italy. Once being told to get out of a port immediately and another time being told I shouldn't have picked up a buoy. The latter episode was sorted by playing stupid but the former was unsuccessful, even when I showed the pilot book which suggested that I could anchor there.

 

[MapisM]

the former was unsuccessful, even when I showed the pilot book which suggested that I could anchor there.

I appreciate that referring to a pilot book written in English is sensible, and it's illogical to expect everyone boating in IT waters to speak Italian, also considering that ours is a very tourism-oriented Country.
But as a matter of fact, the only valid and enforceable regulations are those I previously linked, and while probably most of the time pilot books reflect them correctly, I'm sure it can happen that they don't.
An "ordinanza" can be issued at any moment for whatever reason, becoming immediately enforceable.
That aside, obviously also among public officers you can find the good, the bad and the ugly...

 

[dgadee]

That aside, obviously also among public officers you can find the good, the bad and the ugly...

Well, I thought negotiation might have worked if I showed him the pilot book. He didn't have English so one of the men without all the magnificent gold braid, neat white leather shoes, and a sense of self importance translated for him. But he made himself pretty clear with, 'Vamoosh!" it made for a good story in my crew's log.

I enjoyed Italy, but why all that rubbish in the streets? No bins anywhere. When we got to Greece the difference was striking - clean streets, bins every 100m even in quiet rural areas. I had said to an Italian in Crotone about the rubbish lying about the streets. He said. "It is difficult." Not sure what he meant - a bin isn't too dificult to organise. For a tourist economy I found it very strange.

 

[Mistroma]

I have anchored there. My understanding was boats left where ferries might be constrained would be moved. If no one was on board then the coastguard would get the boat moved, at considerable expense. I liked Elba but the crew thought the clothes shops were expensive holiday tat and was glad to move on.

I did have a couple of problems with the coastguard in Italy. Once being told to get out of a port immediately and another time being told I shouldn't have picked up a buoy. The latter episode was sorted by playing stupid but the former was unsuccessful, even when I showed the pilot book which suggested that I could anchor there.

I was also going to mention this. Many boats anchor quite a bit into the area where they aren't meant to be allowed. Nobody seemed to bother until they were all told to clear out one day. Luckily they all had crew on-board. They were well clear of ferries but a small coaster turned up the next day and tied up to a small wharf nowhere near the ferries.

We always anchored clear of that area and never had any problems regarding location. I imagine OP will quickly discover the short-cut to the Co-op supermarket.

Carabinier launch did visit once and tried to con us into paying a fine. They took our documents, claimed there was an error and refused to hand them back to let us see the error. They wanted us to pay a fine before getting them back. We dug out out spare copy and went through it page by page. They had missed the obvious section (in Italian) about registration of our outboard. After grudgingly admitting it was correct, they then demanded proof of the serial number. We handed them a spare copy of the handbook with the serial number and invited them to examine the plate on the engine and the plate on the dinghy.

All documents returned, glum looks all around and then the went to try it on at the next boat. We were hailed by another UK boat the following day as we were returning from the supermarket. They wanted to know about our visit as they had also been told to pay a fine and were just about to go ashore. We told them what to do and they said they weren't going to pay until they'd challenged it.

I've anchored there many times and this was the only problem, probably a one-off. No idea why they decided to do it but certainly spent a long time at each boat (all nationalities)

 

[kingsebi]

Ofcourse I'm not going to anchor where it's not allowed. I guess now that the season is over I will have a lot of room to choose. In the document jaba posted earlier there is a map on the last page. I will see in two days...

Mistroma: The Carabinieri story sounds horrible. I hope not to get into trouble like this. Maybe I should make copies of all my documentation too.

dgadee: I agree, the trash is horrible. Same goes for Spain and France. Coming from Austria where everything is clean this is striking and hard to understand.

 

[sailaboutvic]

If Greece is clean it's only happened in the last four years, Greece was one of the worst places in Europe for plastic bags and bottles we ever seen .

 

[dgadee]

If Greece is clean it's only happened in the last four years, Greece was one of the worst places in Europe for plastic bags and bottles we ever seen .

No idea about that. I heard that Corfu had a considerable problem because of a lack of facilities recently, but I didn't see much of the island. But if your are correct, Greece can certainly show Italy a thing or two. This was Reggio Calabria:



There were almost no bins and people just put pastic bags onto a big pile to be collected. Rubbish would blow off this. You couldn't escape it, Crew and I both liked Crotone - nicest location we saw in Italy, we thought - but the rubbish was everywhere, too.

 

[Mistroma]

Ofcourse I'm not going to anchor where it's not allowed. I guess now that the season is over I will have a lot of room to choose. In the document jaba posted earlier there is a map on the last page. I will see in two days...

Mistroma: The Carabinieri story sounds horrible. I hope not to get into trouble like this. Maybe I should make copies of all my documentation too.

dgadee: I agree, the trash is horrible. Same goes for Spain and France. Coming from Austria where everything is clean this is striking and hard to understand.

Not a big problem with the Carabinieri. Just be polite, be prepared and appear helpful. We only had 2 minor problems in Italian waters, the other was Scicily. We were asked to move from a spot we'd used several times well clear of the harbour entrance. Not exactly blocking the entrance unless boats wanted to miss it by 100m, hit the wall 30m away after running aground in 3m depth. It was obvious that they just wanted us to move into the marina and pay for an overnight stop.

We moved to another spot further away and started a couple of small jobs. They came back a few hours later when returning from patrol and said this spot wasn't good enough and I needed to be another 1/2 mile away. Apparently they wanted us close in right under the end of a small local airport's runway. I said that I was working on the engine and would move after lunch. We were finishing up when they came back out after lunch and headed straight towards us so I began to lift the anchor very slowly. This convinced them to veer away again and we were able to stop and finish lunch before leaving as originally planned.

I don't think that you will run into problems very often.

 

[kingsebi]

Not a big problem with the Carabinieri. Just be polite, be prepared and appear helpful.

That's what I use to do. Until now I only had positive encounters with the coastguard, but then that was on the Atlantic coast, where supposedly they are not so much after your money. One time we ended up talking about life on the water after a short control of my documents in Santander, something I would never imagine doing with the Spanish cops on the road.

dgadee: That picture is horrendous.

 

[sailaboutvic]

No idea about that. I heard that Corfu had a considerable problem because of a lack of facilities recently, but I didn't see much of the island. But if your are correct, Greece can certainly show Italy a thing or two. This was Reggio Calabria:

View attachment 102437

There were almost no bins and people just put pastic bags onto a big pile to be collected. Rubbish would blow off this. You couldn't escape it, Crew and I both liked Crotone - nicest location we saw in Italy, we thought - but the rubbish was everywhere, too.

Let's be fair that looks like a street That's been close down and that happen in any abandon road everyone dump there rubbish there .
I can honestly say even in the most run down town in Sicily its nothing like that licata where we are is a very poor twon and run down in places and there very little litter about every morning there out cleaning the street .
If you want to see what really bad go to one house island just off lefkas , two guys go out most days to clean up , we seen beds , chest freezer and also of rubbish there and the only way they can get there is if someone brings them over in a boat .

 

[dgadee]

Let's be fair that looks like a street That's been close down and that happen in any abandon road everyone dump there rubbish there .
I can honestly say even in the most run down town in Sicily its nothing like that licata where we are is a very poor twon and run down in places and there very little litter about every morning there out cleaning the street .
If you want to see what really bad go to one house island just off lefkas , two guys go out most days to clean up , we seen beds , chest freezer and also of rubbish there and the only way they can get there is if someone brings them over in a boat .

No, it was beside a building which was closed but the street led from housing up to housing. The streets outside the flats were thick with rubbish. I think there was a school across from it. That was perhaps the worst, but all around there were scattered piles of rubbish with plastic bags, bottles, etc. everywhere.

We were anchored in the bay south of Nidri and walked around most of it. Bins everywhere and absolutely nothing like the average street in Italy.

I didn't find Spain a problem. Bins everywhere and certainly nothing like Italy.

 

[dgadee]

Although ... just looked at Google streetview of the street where I took that picture and things are generally cleaner. Perhaps we were unlucky and there was a strike or something causing the buildup.

 

[sailaboutvic]

Although ... just looked at Google streetview of the street where I took that picture and things are generally cleaner. Perhaps we were unlucky and there was a strike or something causing the buildup.

It could had been .
I have to say we spend a lot of years sailing in Italy on and off and we have no complaints the port police have always been friendly normally don't bother you and when they do it's only for insurance unless you anchor somewhere silly ,
the food in Italy makes Greek food like school dinners ,
The scenery is beautiful and green , fisherman always happen to make room for us and the people are welcoming .
You walk into a village store and they given you food to taste , sit at a small bar for a beer and out come little tastes
To me the next country that come near to Italy is Turkey , people there are very hospitable .
Greece come well after them country it's more in line with Croatia except Croatia has much better country side and views with
History and the food isn't all chips with everything or micro wave moussaka or lamb chop with more bone then meat .
What most people rave about is the anchorages in Greece and there is a lot it's goes without saying
but then there just as much in croatia Turkey .
People seen to feel safe in Greece I not sure why because we not found a country yet we not felt safe in and that includes Tunisia and North Africa .