Monaco to Saint Tropez
The Riviera week, honestly
The most chartered stretch of coast on earth is also the most crowded. Done badly it is a traffic jam. Done well it is still the best week in the Mediterranean.
Between Monaco and Saint Tropez there are sixty nautical miles, five harbours everybody wants to be in, two islands nobody photographs, and in August roughly as many yachts as there is water to put them in. The people who have the best weeks there are not the ones with the biggest boats. They are the ones who go the other way.
The classic route, and why it is crowded
Monaco, Cap Ferrat, Antibes, Cannes, the Îles de Lérins, Saint Tropez and back. It is a beautiful route and it is the route on every charter itinerary ever printed, which means that in the first three weeks of August you will see the same forty yachts in the same five anchorages, and the price of a berth will reflect it.
The corrections that make it work
Anchor more than you berth
The bay behind the Îles de Lérins off Cannes, the anchorages on the north side of Cap Ferrat, the coves west of Saint Tropez towards Cap Camarat. A yacht at anchor with a good tender has a better week than the same yacht stern to in a harbour, and saves several thousand euros a night doing it.
Go west, and then keep going
The coast beyond Saint Tropez towards Bormes, Porquerolles and Port Cros is quieter, greener and half as expensive, and Porquerolles in particular is one of the best days on the entire French coast. Fewer charter itineraries go there because the clients ask for the famous names.
Consider Corsica
An overnight passage from the Riviera puts you in a different country with a fraction of the traffic: Girolata, Scandola, the Lavezzi islands, Bonifacio in its cliff. A ten day charter that spends four days in Corsica is a better holiday than a seven day charter that never leaves the Gulf of Saint Tropez.
The weather
The mistral is the one that matters: a northwesterly that funnels down the Rhône valley, arrives without much warning in the Gulf of Lion and can blow for three days. It is why the anchorages on the south and east sides of headlands are worth knowing, and why the captain's opinion about leaving on Tuesday is not a negotiating position.
Use it now
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