Why-oh-why would you attach a man-overboard horseshoe buoy to a yacht by miles of floating plastic line?
Or any line for that matter.
In a typical use case, in which a crewperson fell overboard while the boat was underway and not immediately brought to a stop, the boat would either drag the buoy away from the struggling victim at speed, or possibly drown them if they'd been unlucky enough to get a hold of it. Potentially breaking their arms in the process.
Or just snapping the line. And now you have an even worse problem to deal with, which is that the line you have trailing in the water around the victim presents a serious propeller-fouling hazard should you attempt to motor back up to rescue them.
It just doesn't make sense!

Anyhow, long story short, some friends and I recently rented a yacht for a week out of a marina on the picturesque Italian island of Procida just off the coast of Naples; home to the Bourbon fort and ex-prison Palazzo d’Avalos.
The boat was a comfortable, but somewhat tired Oceanis 48 Serenesse, not without its problems. Probably due to it being the end of season - when the rental is cheaper but and? the weather livelier.

We sailed from Procida to the charming ex-prison island of Ventotene and anchored off its historic Roman harbour Porto Vecchio carved from the volcanic tuff around the time of Christ.
From there a hop back to Sant'Angelo harbour on Isola d'Ischia - the island next door to Procida featuring fine views of Castello Aragonese - its prominent medieval castle and ex-prison, then across the Gulf of Naples to pick up a mooring buoy off the fishing village of Nerano.
The short hop from there further along the coast, past the dolphin-shaped monastic and ex-prison island of Gallo Lungo, to Amalfi harbour gave us the time to hike the terrifying Path of the Gods (il Sentiero degli dei) - a high trail with spectacular cliff views carved into the earth by the Gods in their haste to save Ulysses from the Mermaids' song, that runs along the top of the mountains from Bomerano to Nocelle, finishing up with a descent to Positano down more steps than the human frame can bear to catch a bus back to Amalfi along the coast road.
In the face of increasingly threatening southerly winds, next day we made a lively retreat from the south-facing Amalfi coast, round the libidinous island of Capri, to Marina Piccola under the fantastically carved cliffs of the northern side of the Sorrento peninsula.
Our final day of sailing took us back across the choppy Gulf of Naples to Procida, with a brief stop for lunch. Over which, apparently, we had no time to linger.

But the important point is that while we were sailing between Ventotene and Ischia, at some speed in strong winds, our horseshoe buoy blew overboard due to the aged weakness in its elastic clips.
The line very quickly uncoiled from its reel (quickly enough to burn the hand of anyone foolish enough to try and grab it), then snapped off at the end, leaving the buoy and a massive cloud of cheap floating plastic line rapidly receding into the distance.
We decided to attempt a (successful) recovery under sail, turning on the engine but not engaging the gear.
Pretty safe you might think.
Unfortunately somehow the line still managed to wrap itself around the prop shaft so tightly that it couldn't be pulled out. We had a couple of swimmers jump in to brave the bath-temperature waters and try to get a proper look at the problem, and for a while we were seriously worried that we might not be able to free it at all, but fortunately the line was so sunburned and frail that it simply tore apart when we eventually gave the prop a couple of experimental spins.
Problem solved!

Overall the sailing was pretty good, warm enough to be fun even in strong wind and rain, and I realised how much I'd missed it. We packed in a lot of it too; even the Sunsail staff seemed genuinely impressed at the amount of distance we had covered.
It was also nice to be sleeping at sea again - though many of my shipmates struggled with the rolling: I just lay crossways on my bunk which helped enormously.

Naples itself, however, seemed to me an ugly, dirty, confusing mess consisting of filth-covered graffiti-ridden buildings, a transport system that struggles to function, or that I struggled to understand, and a vast industrial zone that resembles a dystopian ruin.
(Though I'm told that all the areas I didn't visit are delightful!)
And now I come to think about it, does seem to be surrounded by an awful lot of prisons!

Seen from offshore the Campanian coastline is quite beautiful, even if like much of Naples the settlements look better after dark, but it is beset with arbitrary sailing and anchoring restrictions, and mooring or berthing is limited and expensive. Even in the off season.
I also found the heat difficult to manage at night despite having my cabin fan running at full blast.
Still, the Mediterranean sea was warm, the fish plentiful, the food excellent if pricey, and the Aperol spritzers the perfect end to many perfect lunches afloat.

Arrivederci!