Lunch is the itinerary

The shape of a summer day on a yacht is the same from Pampelonne to Mykonos and it has not changed in thirty years. Swim at ten. Tender in at half past one. Lunch until five, which is not a long lunch by local standards but is three hours longer than anybody planned. Back aboard, shower, move the boat two miles, dinner on deck. The only variable in that day is the table, which is why the captain plans the week around it.

Why the club and not the restaurant in town

Because the boat is at anchor and the tender is the transport. A beach club has a dock or a beach the tender can land on, staff who are used to yachts, a bill that can be sent to the boat, and the assumption that a table of twelve will arrive wet and stay for four hours. A town restaurant has a harbour half a mile away, a parking problem and a second sitting at eight.

The good clubs have understood this completely. They keep tables for boats they know, they have a tender dock with a man on it, and they will send a boat out to collect guests if the swell makes landing awkward.

The geography

• Pampelonne, south of Saint Tropez: the original, a five kilometre beach with twenty clubs on it, half of them serious.
• Formentera and the south of Ibiza: anchorages in turquoise water with clubs on the sand, and the best swimming of the Western Mediterranean.
• The Costa Smeralda: fewer, more formal, tied to the hotels and the harbour at Porto Cervo.
• Capri and the Amalfi coast: cliffs rather than beaches, so the clubs are platforms and bathing terraces reached by boat.
• Mykonos, Paros and Antiparos: the loudest end of the Mediterranean and, out of season, some of the loveliest.

The bill

The etiquette, which is short

Book, and give the boat's name. Arrive when you said you would, because the table is held and the club is full. Land at the dock and not in the swimming area, which is a rule the harbourmaster enforces as well as the club. Tip the tender man of the club. And spend at the table what the beds would have cost, because the arrangement only works if everybody understands it.