Port de Saint-Tropez. Road, helicopter or La Mole, planned so you step aboard on time.

Saint-Tropez moors stern to the quay, which is why the harbour looks the way it does in every photograph: a solid wall of transoms facing the cafes on the Quai Jean Jaures and the Quai Suffren, with passerelles down onto the cobbles and a few metres of public pavement between the guests and the town. It is beautiful and it is completely exposed. There is no gate, no secure apron and no separate superyacht quay set apart from the crowd. If your party wants privacy on the walk from the car, the right answer is usually the hour rather than the berth: before ten in the morning and after eleven at night the quay belongs to the crews again.

The port is also genuinely small. Around 734 berths across two basins, with the inner Jean Lescudier basin holding the smaller boats, the old port taking roughly the 25 to 50 metre range and the outer mole taking the largest, quoted up to about 90 metres. Anything above that, and a good deal below it in high season, lies at anchor in the gulf and comes in by tender. Plan on the tender unless the captain tells you otherwise, because the yacht's agent will have known the answer for months and the driver will not find one out at the barrier.

Saint-Tropez sits at the end of a peninsula on the far side of a gulf. From Nice the route runs west along the motorway, drops down to the coast and then threads through Sainte-Maxime and around the head of the gulf before turning back out along the peninsula. In April that is an hour and a half of pleasant driving. In the first half of August it can be three hours, most of it spent in the last twelve kilometres, and the delay is not evenly spread across the day: late morning and the hours around seven in the evening are the worst, and Saturday changeover days are worse again.

There are three honest ways around it. The first is to fly into La Mole, twenty minutes from the port, which works beautifully for the aircraft that can use it and not at all for the ones that cannot. The second is a helicopter from Nice, which is roughly twenty minutes in the air and removes the problem entirely. The third is simply to move the departure: a car that leaves the villa at seven in the morning arrives on time, and one that leaves at half past eleven does not. We will tell you which of the three we think applies to your day rather than quoting the optimistic figure.

La Mole itself deserves a word of warning. The runway is short, at around 1,130 metres, there is no runway lighting so the field does not operate after dark, and the terrain around it is high. In practice it suits turboprops and the smaller jets, sometimes with limits on passengers and baggage, and hot or windy days tighten those limits further. It is a real option and it is worth asking about, but it is not a field where the aircraft you happen to have is guaranteed to be accepted.

Vehicle access onto the quays is restricted and the old town behind them is a maze of one way streets that are pedestrianised for much of the summer. The workable pattern is a set down at the head of the port near the harbour office, with crew meeting the luggage there and walking it along the quay. For a yacht at anchor in the gulf, the tender comes to the landing agreed for that stay, and it is worth having the captain confirm the exact spot the night before rather than assuming last year's.

Parking is the other quiet problem. The port car parks fill early in high season and a driver who cannot park is a driver who is circling rather than standing by. Tell us if the car needs to wait, and for how long, and we will plan for it. For parties splitting between the yacht and a villa in Ramatuelle or Gassin, a car held on the peninsula for the week is usually cheaper in time than sending one back and forth from Nice.

July and August are the peak, and the first fortnight of August is the peak of the peak. Every road, restaurant table and berth is under pressure and the harbour is full of boats that have come for the day rather than the week. If the point of the trip is the sea rather than the town, June and the second half of September are better in every measurable way.

The other date that changes the town is Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, the classic and modern regatta run by the Societe Nautique de Saint-Tropez. The 2026 edition runs from 26 September to 4 October, with the race village on the outer mole and around 250 boats racing in the gulf. It is a wonderful week to be here and a difficult one to arrive in without a plan, because the town fills again after the summer has emptied it and the quay is given over to the fleet. Further along the coast, the Monaco Yacht Show and the Cannes Yachting Festival pull crews and cars in the same month.