To the Families Who Keep Coming Back

We see you every year. And every year, something’s different.

The little girl who used to grip the side of the boat with both hands. She’s 18 now and she’s the one driving. The dad who spent the first trip white knuckling the throttle and asking every ten minutes if we were “still in the safe zone”? He anchored into the bays last July like he’d been doing it his whole life. Didn’t even look back. We were impressed. We didn’t tell him, obviously.

There’s families from Manchester, three generations now, who’ve been coming to Latchi since 2014.

The grandmother sits at the front with a sun hat the size of a satellite dish and doesn’t move for six hours. The grandchildren jump off the back of the boat roughly four hundred times per trip. The parents drink rosé and pretend not to count. Last summer, the eldest grandson asked if we were hiring. He was twelve. We said we’d keep his CV on file.

Then there’s the couple from Munich who proposed at Fontana Amorosa and now bring the baby. The group of lads from Dublin who started as a stag do in 2019 and have turned it into an annual pilgrimage, slightly less chaotic each year, slightly more sunscreen. The retired teachers from London who come, hire the smallest boat we’ve got, packs a thermos and a book, and anchors in the same bay every single time. We asked them once if they ever wanted to try a different spot. They looked at us like we’d suggested they change their name.