7-Day Aeolian Islands Sailing Itinerary: Lipari, Filicudi, Panarea & Stromboli

The One Table That Plans This Week

Read this before the day-by-day, because it is the thing the day-by-day is built on. Each row is a stop; the last column is what you do when the wind arrives from the wrong quadrant. Notice how often the answer is the other side of the same island — that move is the Aeolian technique, and two of these islands are designed for it.

Two things fall out of that table. The first is that there is no all-weather anchorage in the Aeolian Islands — not one row is sheltered from more than four sectors, and Alicudi is sheltered from two. The second is that the archipelago is deep, and it gets deeper as you go west.

Why the Alarm Radius Grows as You Sail West

Look down the alarm column: 80 metres at Lipari, 85 at Vulcano, 100 at Filicudi, 120 at Alicudi. That is not a matter of taste. It is the depth column, restated.

Your swinging circle is set by how much rode you have out, and how much rode you have out is set by depth times scope. Lipari's Marina Lunga lets you anchor in 4–8 m, so a working 5:1 puts perhaps 30–40 m of chain down and your boat can sit anywhere within about 80 m of the anchor. Alicudi drops away to 25 m almost off the beach; the same 5:1 is now 125 m of chain, and the circle you are entitled to swing through is half as wide again. Set an 80 m alarm there and it will wake you at three in the morning for a boat that is doing nothing wrong. Set a 120 m alarm at Lipari and it will not wake you until you are among the moored boats.

It is worth putting this next to the other Italian week on this site. In La Maddalena, where night anchoring is banned outside the park's mooring buoys, the number we set is 40 m. Here, on the west side of the same country in the same month, it is 120 m. Three times the radius, and none of the difference is preference — it is buoy versus anchor, and shallow versus deep. The scope calculator turns your own depth and rode into the number; the point is simply that it changes every night, and in this archipelago it changes a lot.

Before You Slip: What There Is and Is Not

There is no park permit. The Aeolians are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but unlike La Maddalena or the Egadi Islands they have no single marine protected area selling entry tickets and no A/B/C zone map. Ordinary Italian rules still apply: anchoring on Posidonia seagrass is prohibited nationwide and enforced by the Guardia Costiera through the summer, so look at what is under you and drop on clean sand. Non-EU-flagged vessels complete an arrival declaration at their first Italian port.

There is very little water. Fresh water on the smaller islands is scarce and expensive. Fill in Lipari, which is also where the provisioning, the chandlery and the only real choice of restaurant are. This loop is built to start and finish there for exactly that reason.

There is a great deal of ferry traffic. The aliscafi — fast hydrofoils out of Milazzo — connect every island several times a day, and their wash is significant. Anchor clear of the fairways and harbour entrances, and expect your anchor alarm to be nudged by wash rather than wind at least once.

Day 1 — Lipari to Vulcano (3 nm)

A deliberately trivial first leg. Clear Lipari's Marina Lunga in the late morning, run three miles south through the channel, and anchor at Porto di Ponente on Vulcano's north-west shoulder, in 4–8 m over sand and mud. The black sand beach is the postcard; the sulphur is the thing nobody warns you about, and it will be in your clothes for a week.

Vulcano is the archipelago's clearest demonstration of the two-coast principle. Porto di Ponente shelters you from east through south and is wide open to the west and north-west — so if the Maestrale is forecast, you do not leave the island, you move round to Porto di Levante on the east side and get the shelter the other way. Ten minutes under engine, an entirely different night.

Go up the Gran Cratere early, before the day-trippers and the heat: two hours round trip, no guide needed, and from the rim you can see every island you are about to sail to.

Day 2 — Vulcano to Filicudi (20 nm)

The first real passage, and the day the archipelago stops feeling like a bay and starts feeling like open sea. Twenty miles west with nothing to duck behind: the channels between these islands funnel and accelerate wind, and the afternoon breeze regularly builds to force 4–5 in summer. Leave early, and take the reef in before you need it rather than after.

Porto Filicudi is a deep anchorage — 8–15 m over sand and rock, good holding where you find the sand — sheltered from east through south and wide open to the north-west. This is the point in the week where the chain starts really coming out, and where the alarm radius steps up to 100 m.

Filicudi is the one that stays with people. It is car-free, largely undeveloped, and carries the finest Bronze Age site in the islands at Capo Graziano, on the headland above the anchorage. The Grotta del Bue Marino on the north coast is worth the dinghy trip in flat water.

Day 3 — Filicudi to Alicudi (13 nm)

A short hop west to the end of the world. Alicudi has no cars, no roads worth the name, a few hundred people and mules to carry everything up the terraces. It is the least visited inhabited island in the Mediterranean that still has a ferry.

It is also the most honest warning in this guide. The village anchorage is the only one on the whole loop our database rates as poor holding — rock with sand patches, in 10–25 m, sheltered from east and south-east and open to everything else. Take a mooring buoy if one is free. If it is not, and if the forecast has anything in it from the north or the west, the correct decision is the unglamorous one: look at Alicudi, and sleep at Filicudi.

When it is settled, it is one of the great nights of the Mediterranean: no lights, no road noise, and the strongest case this archipelago makes for a well-set anchor.

Day 4 — Alicudi to Salina, Rinella (24 nm)

The longest day, and the one that needs planning rather than effort. You are crossing the whole archipelago west to east, and the direct line goes straight over Filicudi — so the track passes a couple of miles south of it and then runs along south of Salina to come into Rinella from the south-west.

Why Rinella rather than the main harbour at Santa Marina? Because of the same one-sided rule. Santa Marina is on the east coast, sheltered from west and north-west, deep at 8–15 m and needing 50 m of chain available; Rinella is on the south coast in 4–10 m over sand and gravel, sheltered from north right round to west. Coming from the west with the usual summer breeze behind you, Rinella is both the shorter track and the calmer night. If the wind is in the south, reverse it and go to Santa Marina. That is the whole decision, and it is the same decision Vulcano offered you on day one.

Salina is the green one: two extinct volcanic cones, the archipelago's best malvasia, capers on every terrace, and the film set of Il Postino. It is also the easiest place in the islands to eat well.

Day 5 — Salina to Panarea (14 nm)

Round Salina and head east-north-east for the smallest and smartest of the islands. Cala Junco, at Panarea's southern tip, is the picture everyone has seen: a pebbled cove ringed by basalt, sandy patches among rock in 5–15 m, sheltered north through west and open to the south and east.

Two Panarea notes. The bottom deepens fast, so work into the shallower inner part of the cove and set properly rather than dropping at the mouth in 15 m and hoping. And Panarea in August is a scene — superyachts, tenders, and a rock-star anchorage etiquette that includes far too little swinging room. Our guide to how far apart boats should anchor is the argument you will want in your head, if not out loud.

Day 6 — Panarea to Stromboli (13 nm)

The day the whole week has been pointing at. Thirteen miles north-east, with the cone growing out of the sea ahead of you for three hours, and an arrival timed for late afternoon.

Anchor on the north-east side, at Ficogrande or Scari, in 5–12 m over sand and volcanic stone, with mooring buoys off the beach at Punta Lena. That side gives you shelter from south through west and leaves you open from north through east, which is precisely why Stromboli is a settled-weather stop and never a refuge.

Never the north-west side. The Sciara del Fuoco is the active chute down which the volcano delivers everything it produces, straight into the sea. The standing advice is to keep at least 300 m off it; when INGV raises the alert level the distance goes up, and at orange or red you should be three miles away and thinking about somewhere else entirely. Check ingv.it the morning you leave Panarea, not the evening you arrive.

After dark, the explosions come every fifteen or twenty minutes, and the glow reflects off the water. It is the single best thing you will see from a boat in Europe. It is also a night to stay light on: you are on an exposed shore under an active volcano, everyone on board is looking up rather than at the boat, and the wind that would make this untenable comes from the sector you are open to. Anchor light on, alarm set to 100 m, and enjoy it properly because the boat is being watched.

Day 7 — Stromboli to Lipari (26 nm)

The long run home, and the one leg where the shortest line is the wrong line: it clips Panarea, so the track passes a couple of miles west of the island before coming down Lipari's east coast to Marina Lunga. Twenty-six miles, most of a day, and a good chance of a beam reach if the summer pattern is behaving.

If you have the time and the forecast, break it: Panarea's San Pietro side or a lunch stop at Basiluzzo turns a delivery into a last proper day.

The Five-Day Version

Filicudi and Alicudi are the two that cost you the miles. Drop them and the week compresses cleanly into five days with nothing essential lost:

1. Day 1: Lipari → Vulcano (3 nm)
2. Day 2: Vulcano → Salina, Rinella or Santa Marina (12 nm)
3. Day 3: Salina → Panarea, Cala Junco (14 nm)
4. Day 4: Panarea → Stromboli (13 nm)
5. Day 5: Stromboli → Lipari (26 nm)

Sixty-eight miles, the volcano still in it, and a spare day in hand for the weather — which in this archipelago is not a luxury.

What This Week Actually Teaches

Most cruising grounds let you get away with a plan. The Aeolians do not, because the geometry will not allow it: seven islands in open sea, each one a shelter from a single direction, no marina worth the name to run to, and forty miles between the ends of the archipelago. What you build instead is a habit — look at the forecast, decide which coast, and be willing to move round the island rather than argue with it.

And the corollary, which is the reason this site exists. When every anchorage is open on three sides and the water under you is fifteen or twenty metres deep, the margin between a good night and a bad one is not the anchor, it is whether anyone notices in time. Set the centre on the anchor rather than the boat, set the radius from the depth you actually anchored in, and the archipelago becomes what it should be: the best week's sailing in Italy, and a full night's sleep under a volcano. The full method is in our guide to anchoring a boat, and the archipelago's stops are all in our Aeolian Islands anchorage guide.