The Cap Ferrat peninsula is the green thumb of land between Nice and Monaco where the old money of the Riviera built its villas, and it has two harbours, one on each flank. Port de Beaulieu sits on the eastern side, in the town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer; Port de Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat tucks into the western side of the cape, sheltered by the peninsula itself. Between them they make one of the most protected and pleasant stretches to base a boat on the whole eastern Riviera, and they are a good deal calmer than the big-name harbours either side.
Port de Beaulieu
Beaulieu is the larger of the two, around 723 berths taking boats up to 40 metres, with roughly 30 places kept for visitors. That visitor count is small, so this is not a harbour to chance unbooked in August. It works on VHF channel 9. Depths run to around 4.9 metres at most, with the piers at 3 to 5.8 metres, the outer port about 4 metres and the inner basins shelving from 1.4 up to 4.9 metres, so a deep-keeled boat is fine on the outer berths but should declare its draught and let the office place it.
The town of Beaulieu is a quiet, slightly faded Belle Epoque resort, more retired-elegant than glamorous, which is no bad thing for a cruiser who wants a calm night and a decent dinner. The Villa Kerylos, a full-scale reconstruction of an ancient Greek house, sits right by the water and is worth the walk. Provisioning is easy, the seafront is walkable, and the railway station makes crew changes simple.
Port de Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat
Round the western side of the cape, Saint-Jean is the prettier and more sheltered of the pair, a real fishing-village harbour that has somehow survived among the villas. It holds around 562 berths plus a long 50-metre berth in the outer harbour, takes 3-metre draught on the main jetty and up to 4 metres in the outer harbour, and works on VHF channel 9. There is a touch-and-go welcome dock for boats up to 18 metres, and the harbour office runs 24 hours a day.
One practical point worth knowing: for a short stay of under 48 hours, Saint-Jean does not take online bookings. You arrange it by phone or on VHF channel 9 instead. So if you are planning a one or two-night stop, get on the radio rather than fiddling with a booking app. The village around the harbour is genuinely lovely, with quayside restaurants and a short walk to the beaches at Paloma and the coastal path round the cape, one of the best shore walks on the Riviera.
Berthing both
As everywhere on this coast, the technique is Mediterranean mooring, stern-to or bow-to on a lazy line, and there is no tide to complicate arrival. Both harbours have a welcome or touch-and-go dock so you can tie up alongside, get your bearings and take your allocation before reversing into a finger. If lazy-line mooring is new to you, my walk-through of med mooring with lazy lines covers the crosswind that catches first-timers, and the outer berths at both feel the breeze.
On price, both sit at the upper end of the coast, this being the wealthy heart of the Riviera, though Beaulieu and Saint-Jean both undercut Monaco and the Cap d'Antibes superyacht harbours next door. The seasonal swing is steep, and the shoulder months are far cheaper and easier for space. I have mapped where the eastern coast charges fairly and where it gouges in my breakdown of cote-azur marina fees, and these two land in the dear-but-fair band for the area.
The real draw: the bays
The reason I keep coming back to Cap Ferrat is not the harbours, it is the anchorages. The bays around the peninsula and across at Villefranche are deep, well-sheltered and good holding in sand, and they are where I drop the hook to dodge the marina bills entirely. The huge bay of Villefranche, just west of the cape, is one of the safest natural anchorages on the coast; Anse de l'Espalmador and the coves under the cape give you sheltered swimming water. I have written about these in detail in my guide to the cap ferrat villefranche bays, including which spots stay calm in which wind.
As everywhere on the Riviera, the seabed here is largely protected posidonia seagrass, so you cannot drop anchor at will: aim for sand, read the local restrictions and use the eco-moorings where they exist. The anchoring rules for the whole coast sit alongside the route planning in my french riviera sailing guide.
Where they sit on the coast
Cap Ferrat is bang in the middle of the eastern Riviera, which makes it a fine hub. West, you are minutes from nice port lympia, the working heart of the city's waterfront and a useful provisioning and crew-change harbour. East, Monaco and the Italian border are within a comfortable day, and the last French marina before Italy, the menton marina, makes a natural turning point. I treat the Beaulieu and Saint-Jean harbours as the comfortable nights between days spent anchored in the bays.
Weather and shelter
The great virtue of this stretch is shelter. Villefranche and the western flank of the cape are protected from the prevailing winds, and even the mistral, the cold north-westerly off the Rhone valley, arrives here much weakened after its long fetch east. The exposure to watch is a strong easterly, which sends swell into the eastern-facing harbours and onto the eastern bays; when the wind goes into the east, move to the western side of the cape. Summer thunderstorms build over the mountains behind and arrive fast, so check the afternoon forecast before committing to a passage towards Monaco or Menton.
A fortnight based here
If I had two weeks and a boat on the eastern Riviera, this is where I would spend them. The pattern almost runs itself: a night at Saint-Jean for the village dinner and the coastal walk round the cape, two or three days anchored in Villefranche bay swimming off the boat, a provisioning night at Beaulieu with a walk to the Villa Kerylos, and a day sail west to Nice or east towards Monaco and Menton when the mood takes. The peninsula is small enough that you can move to the sheltered side of it within an hour whenever the wind shifts, which means you very rarely have a bad night. It is the only stretch of the Riviera where I have spent a week and barely touched a marina bill, because the bays do so much of the work.
Practical notes
Some things worth knowing. The coastal path round Cap Ferrat is one of the great shore walks of the Riviera, free and open, and it is reason enough to take a berth at Saint-Jean for a day. The villas you pass from the water include some of the most expensive private houses in Europe, and the bays in front of them are public anchorages, so do not be put off by the grandeur ashore. The water round the cape is deep close in, which is a help when anchoring but means you need plenty of chain. And remember the Saint-Jean short-stay rule: under 48 hours is phone and VHF only, no online booking, so program the harbour office number into your phone before you arrive. Beaulieu takes online bookings normally, which makes it the easier of the two to secure in advance during the busy months.
My verdict
Beaulieu and Saint-Jean are the civilised choice on the eastern Riviera: well sheltered, properly run, surrounded by some of the best anchoring bays on the coast, and cheaper than the Monaco and Antibes harbours that bracket them. Use the harbours for the comfortable night and the village dinner, use the bays for the free days, and get on the radio rather than the booking app if you are stopping at Saint-Jean for under 48 hours. It is the part of the coast I would choose to base a boat for a fortnight without hesitation.
