Tuscany

Find your beach, then the nearest board

The hotel or the flat usually gets booked long before anyone thinks about a board, and on this coast that does no harm. Your town fixes two things at once: how far away the nearest eFoil is, and which coast guard office writes the beach rules you ride under. Each ordinance binds only its own district; the Etruscan coast is split between two of them.

Renting a Fliteboard in Viareggio

CSN, short for Centro Servizi Nautici, is a marine engineering workshop on Via Libeccio in Viareggio and the official service point for Fliteboard in Italy. It also rents out a Fliteboard from the Approdo Turistico La Madonnina, a marina in Viareggio. The listing marks it as a craft you can ride without a boat license.

This is a rental and nothing else. No lesson is offered, so CSN suits someone who already knows how to get up on a board and wants time on the water. The list prices are €140 an hour, €250 for a half day, €350 for a day and €1,500 for a week. CSN can deliver the board or you pick it up at the Viareggio base; ask for the delivery price when you book.

The hourly rate stops making sense after the first hour. Two hours come to €280 against €250 for the half day, and the full day at €350 costs the same as two and a half hours, so a long session belongs on the day rate.

The right place for a first hour, and for a rental

For a first hour, Marina di Pietrasanta is the easier booking from a base in Versilia, with a format and a price you see before you pay. PKS is the one for a stay further south, and its radio means you hear the instructor's corrections while you are still up on the board.

A rental assumes you can already get up and stay up. CSN in Viareggio offers no lesson with its board, and PKS hands one over only to riders with eFoil experience. Viareggio gives the most choice, from one hour to a full week, which suits a family staying in Versilia that wants the board on several days. In the Maremma, PKS delivery saves the trip to the school. Our beginner board guide explains what makes the first hour easier or harder.

What the coast guard allows near a Tuscan beach

On the beach, what governs an eFoil is the seasonal bathing safety order of the local coast guard office, the ordinanza di sicurezza balneare. Four Tuscan districts draw a bathing zone 200 m out from beaches and 100 m from cliffs or sheer coast, and keep motor and sail units out of it during bathing hours. The way through is a buoyed corridor, at 3 knots or the lowest revs.

Livorno adds a clause for jet skis “and similar natanti” in article 8. In season they may only leave from a port or a corridor, at no more than 3 knots, ridden by an adult with a license and a flotation device. The text does not settle whether an eFoil counts as similar, and a written answer from the Capitaneria di Porto di Livorno is the only firm ground for riding a board of your own there. Ordinance n. 59 also refers to the district's ordinance n. 43/2022 of 06.05.2022 on the hydrofoil water bike Manta 5 XE1, the only foil craft any Tuscan text names.

Piombino's order adds the markings, red buoys at most 50 m apart along the zone edge and orange ones along each corridor, every 20 m for the first 100 m and every 50 m after that. Off sheer coast with no bathers, you cross the strip at no more than 3 knots, straight to land. Elba's order covers all seven of the island's comuni from the third Saturday of May to the third Sunday of September, names surf, windsurf, kitesurf, jetlev and flyboard among the excluded units, and keeps the ban outside the 09:00 to 19:00 window wherever a board would disturb or endanger swimmers. Viareggio bans bathing within 50 m of the shore in front of river mouths.

Above the ordinances sits D.Lgs. 18 luglio 2005 n. 171, the pleasure boating code, and the word eFoil appears in neither layer. Article 27, paragraph 3(c), of the code lets natanti without CE marking, “tavole autopropulse o non autopropulse” (powered or unpowered boards) among them, travel within one mile of the coast, and paragraph 6 hands the rules for their navigation to the local maritime authority, which is how the coast guard offices come to write them. Treating an eFoil as one of those boards is our reading.

Article 39 requires a boat license beyond six miles, on a moto d'acqua (a jet ski), or above 30 kW (40.8 CV). Within six miles and below that power a natante needs no license, only a driver of at least 16. A moto d'acqua, under article 3, paragraph 1(h), is defined by its water jet pump. A propeller eFoil has none, which as we read it keeps the board out of the jet ski category. Two more texts concern owners. D.Lgs. 7 settembre 2005 n. 209, article 123, paragraphs 1 and 3, requires third party liability insurance for motorized pleasure craft, removable motors of any power included. Annex V to D.M. 29 luglio 2008 n. 146, as replaced by D.M. 17 settembre 2024 n. 133, section C point 2, puts riders of sailboards, kitesurfs, jet skis and similar units in a flotation aid of at least category 50. Neither names the eFoil; we take both to cover one.

Read together, the mainland districts keep motor units out of the 200 m strip from 08:30 to 19:30 and Elba from 09:00 to 19:00, and a board with no chapter of its own falls under the motor rules. We take that to mean the zone ban lapses with the bathing season, while ordinary caution and every other ordinance still apply. Messina, in Sicily, has written a chapter on e-boards and eFoils into its ordinance; its figures do not apply in Tuscany. The eFoil rules guide compares countries.

This summary of official texts is not legal advice. The ordinance of the district where you launch is the text that counts.

Trains to Versilia, a car for the Maremma, a ferry for Elba

Of the two eFoil areas, only Versilia has a direct regional train from Florence and from Pisa, so it is the one that works as a day trip from a city break. From Florence a regional line runs through Pistoia and Lucca to Viareggio, with a pair of faster trains that skip the stops between Pistoia and Lucca. Viareggio and Forte dei Marmi both sit on the Pisa to La Spezia railway.

Flying into Pisa, take the PisaMover shuttle from the airport. It needs a few minutes to Pisa Centrale, with a stop at San Giusto/Aurelia on the way, and from Pisa Centrale the coast trains head north through Viareggio and Forte dei Marmi. The Freedome meeting point at Marina di Pietrasanta can be reached by public transport, and a one hour lesson fits easily into a beach day.

The Maremma is a car trip. No direct train runs from Florence to its beaches, Castiglione della Pescaia has no railway, and PKS sits on the coast road, the SP delle Collacchie. For the Argentario, Trenitalia sells an “Argentario link”, a train to Orbetello and a bus from the station forecourt to Porto Santo Stefano on one ticket.

Elba starts at Piombino. Piombino Marittima station sits on the passenger port where many of the ferries leave; the other way in is a train to Campiglia Marittima and the link bus from the station forecourt to Piombino Marittima. Trenitalia sells train and bus on one ticket, its Elba Link continues to Portoferraio, Rio Marina and Cavo, and Moby runs Piombino to Portoferraio.