St Tropez - St Jean Cap Ferrat - 21-24 October

Ha ha, of course it’ll blow through…eventually. It lashed it down with rain, the wind came up to a 10, the roads flooded and we were stuck on Zaffina throughout the tempest. And then, miraculously, on Friday the sun rose into a blue sky and the temperature soared and St Tropez turned back into the chic resort we were familiar with. Better still, it was sale time – a special 3 day event when all the shops put their wares on stalls out in the streets at reduced prices and the entire population of the South of France crowds into the town! You could barely walk through the narrow lanes but the atmosphere was vibrant and exciting and we loved being a part of it. The strange thing was, with the weather the preceding few days, everyone was dressed for winter in thick jumpers, jeans and boots but now it was really hot and there were a lot of sweaty red faces around!
We stayed on our gorgeous berth until Saturday. Our superyacht neighbour had been replaced by an even larger craft and we were truly stuck in a bottleneck, unable to leave any earlier even if we’d wanted to. On our last night in port there was a magnificent firework display, which we watched from the bridge – no doubt they were celebrating our imminent departure! It was a fitting end to a fun few days.
Conditions were brilliant on Saturday and as we slipped out of port, we were buzzed by a helicopter with a cameraman sitting in the doorway taking photos (you can probably see them at flypictures.com, we haven’t checked yet – either that or they’ll appear in Hello! next month!!) The mountains in the distance had a new coating of snow on the peaks, something that hadn’t been there when we arrived in Provence, and they stood out brilliantly against the blue of the sky and provided a dramatic backdrop for Cannes as we passed.
We decided to stop for a spot of lunch between the islands of St Marguerite and St Honore, and after demolishing a chicken bought hot in the market that morning we fell asleep in the sunshine, lying on the bow cushions. Lovely! It was a bit cooler when we set off again in the afternoon, heading for a favourite spot – Villefranche, just to the east of Nice. There was a bit too much swell to anchor in the spot we had anticipated so instead we turned around the headland of St Jean Cap Ferrat into an utterly calm anchorage, which we shared for the night with just 2 other yachts. We ate dinner in the cockpit, gazing out over the calm sea at the luxurious villas of the rich and famous which dot the headland, and watching the lights appear on the nearby hillsides and the stars shining in a velvety night sky.