Somersaulting manta rays big draw on yacht holiday

It seemed too good to be true, and it was. After a week of frustratingly windless Mediterranean weather, Sea Flower was finally relishing a good breeze and storming from the island of Ischia across the Bay of Naples towards Capri.

Then our friend Patrick, who sports a reassuringly seamanlike grizzled beard, bellowed "No steering!" from the helm and showed us the wheel spinning uselessly as the 11-metre cutter began to veer off course and head gently up into the wind.

It may not be the most unwelcome shout a skipper can hear ("Man overboard!" and "Fire!" are worse), but the inability to steer the boat certainly gets you thinking fast about dangers to leeward, ports of refuge and the possibility of foreshortened vacations and unhappy teenagers.

Fortunately the rudder was intact and we had taken the precaution at the start of our cruise in the city of Pisa of checking the emergency tiller, which slots over the top of the rudder post and allows you to steer the 12-tonne boat like a rather heavy dinghy.

So we made it safely into harbour at Capri, which has the twin distinction of being the most expensive marina in which we have ever berthed, and probably the best value for money, given the cost of the island's hotel rooms.

A price of €130 does not sound so bad when you divide it between the six of us on board (our family of four and a couple of old friends eccentric and tolerant enough to spend two weeks in June with us).

But the failure of the steering cable was a harsh reminder that all boats - from the multimillion-dollar luxury motor yachts that towered over us at Capri to the smallest sailing vessel pottering about the Solent - depend on constant maintenance and repair of the multiple systems that make them work.

Passengers on professionally crewed superyachts may be blissfully unaware of what goes on behind the bulkheads, but skippers of their own boats know the need for eternal vigilance about sails, rigging, plumbing, electrical systems, electronic instruments, refrigeration and auxiliary diesel engines.

It means for example that my 82-year-old mother in Kent finds herself each winter taking delivery of mysterious packages from online chandleries containing toilet repair kits, fanbelts or solar charge regulators that allow the batteries to be safely charged by the boat's flexible solar panels.

Even so, I reflected at the end of our cruise in Salerno as I struggled in the bowels of the boat to dismantle the broken steering system, it was all worth it - for the manta rays alone.

We had eaten well and drunk good Italian wine, having started our holiday on the banks of the Arno river near Pisa.

We had enjoyed swimming in the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean and walking through the fragrant scrub of the islands of Elba, Giglio and Capri. We had seen the sights, classical and Renaissance, including the Roman galley harbour dug out of rock at Ventotene and the ruins of Herculaneum on the shore near Naples underneath a steaming Mount Vesuvius.

But to our surprise, the highlights of this trip in the overfished Mediterranean were undoubtedly provided by the marine life.

The manta rays were the most spectacular and unexpected of all. As we approached Ponza one morning after an overnight sail from Giglio, I was puzzled to see what appeared to be a big wet blanket leap into the air from the sea and flop back into the water about half a mile ahead.

Closer to Ponza we were treated to the extraordinary sight of at least three of these big rays chasing each other elegantly through the water a few inches below the surface. They appeared to ignore us completely as we gawped at their antics.

Occasionally one would leap high into the air and perhaps do a somersault before splashing down again. We immediately assumed they were engaged in some kind of mating frenzy, although from the little research available on the habits of rays we later concluded that their behaviour might equally have had something to do with feeding.

Either way, we all felt privileged to have witnessed the sight because it is the kind of experience you can have only on a boat.

Last year, I nearly ran over a large sea turtle off Elba. This year we saw dolphins, several sunfish - the massive, inedible creatures that flop about on the surface - and a bizarre black-cloaked sea slug about four inches long that looked like a swimming Phantom of the Opera, but turned out to be a sea hare.

Next year, we aim to head south again and see the Aeolian islands and the live volcano of Stromboli. I just have to fix the steering first.

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