Who Needs A Yacht?

After going as fast as possible for quite a while, the boys finally agreed it was time for a swim. We picked a cove and dropped anchor. We've been on boats before, but we're not experts by any means. So far, it didn't seem that hard. Our anchor held on our first try.

We leapt off the boats into the Mediterranean (after we made sure the ladders were down so we could get back on). The water was amazing -- so clean, so clear, so cool. The backdrop of the Italian coast was hauntingly dramatic. We threw in the boats' floating life rings and bobbed along for a long time, marveling at the beauty of the water. The boys and their friends did flips and dives off the boat.

Soon it was time for lunch, and our humble fare was perfect. Since we hadn't brought a knife, we tore the moist mozzarella, putting the ragged, dripping slices inside the still-warm pizza along with the prosciutto. We sat under our awnings, eating and drinking and watching the suntanned Italians lunching on their toy-filled yacht on the other side of the cove.

After lunch, we did the Italian thing and lay around on the boats, reading and napping, before we decided it was time to do more boating. We found another cove nearby, swam to the shore and climbed onto the big rocks at the shoreline. Some sea porcupines nestled on the rocks, but we could see them clearly in the water and managed to avoid them.

By now, everyone wanted a gelato, so we zoomed back to Porto Ercole and then beyond it to the super-chic private harbor of Cala Galera, where most of the million-dollar yachts we saw are kept. We puttered slowly around the small ritzy harbor, ogling the expensive boats, laughing at the most ostentatious ones and dreaming about where we would keep our boat if ever we really got one.

We pulled up to Cala Galera's main coffee bar and a few of us disembarked to pick up gelati and granite, that quintessentially Italian crushed-iced drink that comes in lots of fruit flavors. (I picked watermelon.) We were unsteady on our feet after being on the boat all day.

I struck up a conversation with the barrista while he scooped out the rich, creamy chocolate gelato . I told him we were tourists and that we had rented a couple of motorboats from Porto Ercole. "It must be nice to own one of these big boats," I said. "This is the life, eh?"

"I'm not so sure about that," he answered in Italian. "They're always worrying, the people who own these boats. About a storm coming, about the money they're spending, about the maintenance they have to do. And they don't use the boats that much because it costs them 200 euros [about $245] in gas to go swimming in Giglio." (Giglio, a lovely island that is another favorite with Italian boat owners, is an hour's ferry ride from Argentario.) "You're fine just with the boat you have."

That wasn't what I was expecting to hear after my glorious day at sea, but the barrista said he had heard it all from the mostly Roman boat owners who kept their crafts there during the 30 years he had worked at the bar.

Back on the water, I told my husband what the barrista had said. He wasn't ready to give up on the fantasy.

All of a sudden, it seemed, we noticed an ominous dark cloud forming on the horizon, something we saw only once during our visit to Italy this year. We looked at the time. It was 5:15 p.m. and the boats were due back by 6:30. We had been out for more than six hours. We were sun-drenched, water-logged and had had a marvelous day.

The first fat raindrops fell as we pulled into the rent-a-boat place, the young Italian waving us in to two open spots. By the time the quick-developing storm really got going and the rain was coming down in big, black sheets, we were safely inside our hotel overlooking the port.

We sat inside and looked at our boats bobbing in the rain. The barrista was right: It was nice not to have to worry about how they'd weather the storm.

Daniela Deane, a writer/editor for The Post's Continuous News desk, last wrote for Travel about building a house in Italy.