Cannes. Two harbours, one boulevard, and four weeks that decide everything.

Cannes works as a yachting town because the Vieux Port is in the middle of it rather than on the edge. The Jetee Albert Edouard runs out beside the Palais des Festivals, the Quai Saint-Pierre sits under the hill of Le Suquet with restaurants along it, and from the head of either quay the Croisette hotels are a walk rather than a drive. The largest yachts in the harbour lie on those two quays, which means that guests arriving to join a yacht in Cannes are usually set down within a few minutes of where they will eat that evening.

Port Pierre Canto is the other half of the picture, roughly a mile east at the far end of the Croisette. It is quieter and further from the noise, with berths for yachts to around ninety metres. The practical difference is that Canto is a proper car journey from the Palais in a busy week, not a stroll, and the Croisette between them is one of the slowest kilometres on the coast in season.

A redevelopment of the Vieux Port has been under way in recent years, including work to extend the Albert Edouard jetty and add berths for larger yachts. Quay layouts, pedestrian routes and where vehicles may stop have all moved during that programme, so nothing about the ground plan here should be assumed from a previous visit.

Access to the pontoons and the large quays is controlled, as it is in every port on this coast. A car is set down at or near the head of the quay, crew meet the luggage and carry it to the passerelle, and the driver then goes to park rather than waiting. On the Jetee Albert Edouard and the Quai Saint-Pierre the walk can be a few minutes in itself, and in a festival week the point at which vehicles are turned back is much further out than usual.

When the yacht is anchored in the bay rather than berthed, which is the normal picture in May and September and common in August, the fixed point of the day becomes the tender quay. Tenders in Cannes land at the Quai Max Laubeuf, on the western side of the Vieux Port. That is where the car waits, that is where the evening ends, and that is the address to give us. Tender pontoon space inside the harbour is allocated to exhibitors and to the event programme during the big shows, so in those weeks the captain will tell you exactly where and when the tender can come in, and the plan is built around it.

One more local reality: the Croisette. It is a single seafront boulevard carrying every car in Cannes, and in season it does not flow. Repositioning a vehicle from one end of it to the other during the evening takes longer than holding the car does.

Twice a year the harbours are not available in the ordinary sense. The Cannes Yachting Festival takes over both the Vieux Port and Port Canto for its six days in early September, with the 2027 edition scheduled for 7 to 12 September, the fiftieth year of the show. Visiting berths in that window effectively disappear, the quays become an exhibition site, and pedestrian and vehicle routes around the Palais are laid out for the event rather than for the town.

The Cannes Film Festival, scheduled for 11 to 22 May 2027, does something different but just as decisive. Berths are committed long before the programme is announced, many yachts sit at anchor off the Croisette and tender in, and the streets around the Palais are controlled with drop off points that change with the security plan, sometimes from day to day. The honest advice for both weeks is the same: ask months ahead, expect to walk further than you would like, and agree the drop off with the driver the night before. Outside those weeks, Cannes is one of the easiest places on this coast to join a yacht.