Île de Porquerolles

Leaving St Tropez   

Skylark   

After our fab morning blast on the motorboat it was time for us to leave Sean and Caroline and head away from St Tropez. It had been great to see them and they had hosted us magnificently, but they now had other priorities to concentrate on. So, back aboard BV we lifted anchor at 1115hrs and motored out past St Tropez, which took us significantly longer than it had earlier in the day!

Once clear of St Tropez we hoisted the sails and started motor sailing in the light 5 knot wind. As we left the Golfe de St Tropez we passed Skylark, one of Sean’s boss’ other yachts, heading the other way.

We rounded the headland with all of the really large villas and turned to head 30 miles west along the coastline towards the Îles d’Hyères. This is a group of 4 islands, Île du Levant, Île de Port-Cros, Île de Baguad and the largest, Île de Porquerolles.

Île de Porquerolles   

Anchoring is restricted to small areas around the islands and there are extensive no entry and no landing areas because of marine reserves and areas reserved for the Navy’s use. With the forecast wind, we headed towards Île de Porquerolles because it gave us more options to find somewhere suitable to stop.

Even with the rather dull overcast weather the islands looked very attractive and as we rounded the Cap des Medes and started to be able to look into the anchorages we could see that they were very popular too. Finding a spare piece of sand to anchor on may prove to be more of a challenge than we had anticipated.

Plage d’Argent   

The last of our bottarga from Sicily   

However, by not trying to get too close to the beach we were able to anchor off Plage d’Argent which gave us good shelter from the expected overnight southerly winds.

It was a lovely place to stop and, whilst we ate the last of our bottarga, along with a glass or 2 of wine, we hatched a plan to visit the village on the island in the morning. We wanted to explore the islands for a few days but had also been keeping a very close eye on the weather forecast.

Our issue was that a mistral was expected to blow strongly for several days and the timing for its arrival seemed to have crept gradually earlier, whilst its forecast end date seemed to have stayed the same. The further complication was that we needed to be in Menorca in just under a fortnight’s time so that we would be ready to meet up with my daughter, Charlotte, there.

The forecast mistral wind just when we wanted to be sailing to Menorca   

A further check on the weather confirmed that the mistral was building even earlier than originally forecast and was now set to blow its hardest when we had wanted to sail down to Menorca. Our options were to sit it out on the south coast of France or sail to Menorca early. If we went in the morning we’d have a good wind for the first part of the 200 mile passage but then probably have to motor. If we left after the mistral we’d have the wind on the nose and a lumpy sea.

Not wishing to be late for Charlotte, or to push our luck in this notorious patch of sea, we decided that the prudent plan was to head towards Menorca in the morning and to get there before the mistral did. Therefore, our plan to cruise the Île d’Hyères’ was filed in the ‘to-do next time we are here’ folder and we set our alarm clock to catch the morning wind.

Ile de Porquerolles, France