Porto Cervo. One airport, one marina, and eight weeks everybody wants.

Porto Cervo is a natural inlet on a granite coastline, developed from the early 1960s as the centre of the Costa Smeralda. The marina sits at the head of it, spread across basins that between them hold something in the order of seven hundred berths, with a run of larger berths that can take yachts of a size most Mediterranean harbours simply turn away. The village, the Piazzetta and the shops sit on the slope above, close enough to walk to from most berths and steep enough that the walk is a decision rather than a stroll in August heat.

The Yacht Club Costa Smeralda is on the same water and sets much of the calendar. A superyacht regatta in early June opens the season and the maxi yacht regatta in early September closes it. Those two windows, plus the whole of July and August, are when the marina is full and when berths, cars and crew accommodation are all committed a long way ahead.

What is different here compared with the French ports is the surroundings. There is no city behind the quay. The coast is twenty kilometres of inlets, headlands and hotels connected by narrow roads that were deliberately not built for volume, and much of what makes the place worth the journey is only reasonably reached by tender: the granite islands of the Maddalena archipelago and the beaches along the channel.

Access to the pontoons and the larger quays is controlled and the marina is patrolled, as you would expect of a harbour holding this much value in one inlet. In practice a car is set down at the head of the relevant quay or in the parking area above it, crew meet the luggage there, and the driver then leaves rather than waits. Parking around the marina and the village is limited and tightly managed in season, so a driver who intends to sit and wait will be moved on.

Addresses on the Costa Smeralda are vague by design. Villas have names rather than numbers, hotels are spread across headlands, and the signage is deliberately understated. Give us the berth, the pontoon or the villa name and the nearest landmark, and give it to us before the day rather than on it. A driver who does not know the coast can lose twenty minutes within two kilometres of where you are standing.

Tender arrivals are the other half of the picture. A yacht lying off a beach in the Maddalena channel or anchored round a headland runs her tender in to an agreed point, and the car is planned around that point rather than around a hotel. Tell us where the tender will land and what time the captain wants everyone back on board. That is the fixed part of the day.

The Costa Smeralda season is effectively June to September, with July and August carrying almost all of the demand. The middle of August, around Ferragosto, is the hardest week of the year for everything on this coast: aircraft parking at Olbia, cars, drivers, berths, restaurant tables and the roads themselves. It is not a week to improvise in, and it is not a week in which a request made in June is likely to be met.

Arrivals are shaped by what happens at Olbia as much as by the marina. Slots are required in the high season and parking is the harder constraint: in July and August many aircraft are accepted on a drop and go basis, disembarking passengers and repositioning empty before returning for the departure. That is normal here rather than a sign of a problem, but it has to be settled when the flight is arranged, not afterwards. June and September are the weeks experienced visitors quietly prefer. See Porto Cervo and the Costa Smeralda for how the wider coast works.