This is a coastal label rather than a cruising ground. Our 19 boats are spread across roughly 700 kilometres of Italian Adriatic shoreline: nine at Rodi Garganico on the Gargano promontory in Puglia, four at Porto San Giorgio in the Marche, two at Lignano near the Venetian lagoon, two at San Pietro and one at Pescara. No single itinerary covers them, so the useful question is what each base opens.
The one that matters most is Rodi Garganico, because half the fleet is there and because it is the only base in the region with a genuine archipelago in front of it. The Tremiti islands lie about twenty nautical miles offshore — five small limestone islands, three of them worth visiting, inside a marine protected area. They are the only real island cruising on Italy's Adriatic coast and the reason to sail from the Gargano rather than anywhere else here.
The Gargano itself is the other half of that week: a limestone promontory sticking out into the Adriatic, with sea caves, cliffs and a national park covering most of it. It is a completely different coast from the long sandy beaches that run north and south of it.
The northern bases are a different proposition. From Lignano you are at the top of the Adriatic, with the Venetian lagoon, Grado and the Slovenian and Croatian Istrian coast within reach — which makes a one-way or a cross-border week the natural plan, subject to what your agreement allows. Porto San Giorgio and Pescara sit on the long central coast, where the shore is low and the destinations are towns rather than anchorages.
The fleet averages 13.5 metres and 4.1 cabins with a 2018 build year, eight of the 19 are skippered, and all 19 change over on a Saturday. The Adriatic here is shallow, the bora reaches across from the Croatian side, and summer afternoons bring thunderstorms off the Apennines.
