Half the reason I keep a boat in the Mediterranean is the swimming. Not the beach kind, where you fight for a metre of sand and the water is warm soup by August, but the kind where you drop the hook in a cove no road reaches, the depth-sounder reads five metres of gin-clear water over white sand, and you go straight over the side off the swim ladder. Provence and the Riviera have the best of it in France, and over several summers I have built a fairly opinionated list of where the swimming is finest from the boat. Ranked, with the depths and the holding, because a swimming spot is only as good as the anchorage that gets you there.
One rule governs all of this now and you cannot ignore it: the posidonia seagrass. Anchoring on the meadows is banned across much of the Med coast, the fines run as high as 150,000 euros, and the seabed maps in apps like Donia show you where the clean sand is. Drop only on sand, never on the dark seagrass patches, and you are both legal and better held. I set out the whole regime in Cote d'Azur anchoring rules 2026, and it is essential reading before you anchor anywhere on this list.
1. Calanque d'En-Vau
The most spectacular swimming I know in France. En-Vau is the picture-postcard calanque between Marseille and Cassis, a slot of turquoise water at the foot of vertical white limestone, with a small beach at its head. The water is astonishingly clear and the swim from a boat anchored off the entrance, in towards the beach between the cliffs, is unforgettable. The catch is that En-Vau is narrow and busy and the holding inside is patchy, so most boats anchor outside and swim or dinghy in, and you would not stay overnight in anything but a flat calm. Treat it as the jewel of a day spent in the Calanques between Marseille and Cassis.
2. Port-Pin and Port-Miou, Cassis
Next door to En-Vau, these two are the practical swimming bases. Port-Miou is a long, narrow fjord-like inlet, a natural harbour where boats lie to lines and moorings, and you swim off the rocks and pontoons in deep, sheltered water. Port-Pin is wilder, with a small beach at the back that is ideal for families and shallow enough for children. Between them they give you sheltered, all-day swimming with a secure place to leave the boat, which En-Vau does not. I use Port-Miou as my base and dinghy along the coast to the better-looking calanques to swim.
3. Notre-Dame beach, Porquerolles
The island of Porquerolles, off Hyeres, has the clearest island water on the French Med mainland coast, and Notre-Dame beach on its northern shore is the pick of it: a long curve of pale sand backed by pine, with crystal water shelving gently. The whole island is a protected conservation area, which is exactly why the water stays so clean. Anchor off in sand, watch the seagrass, and swim ashore. Porquerolles gets busy in August but the water rewards the crowd. I cover the island and its neighbours in Porquerolles and the Hyeres islands, which is where I would point any swimmer first.
4. The Lerins islands, off Cannes
A short sail from Cannes, the Lerins islands give you some of the most swimmable shallows on the Riviera. The seabed between Sainte-Marguerite and Sainte-Honorat is an alternation of fine sand and posidonia, the water visibility reaches up to 15 metres, and Bateguie Bay offers a sandy-bottomed anchorage sheltered from the mistral in 3 to 5 metres. The channel between the two islands is 700 to 900 metres wide and under 10 metres deep, warm and clear and perfect for a long swim. Anchor on the sand patches only. There is even an underwater eco-museum of submerged sculptures to snorkel over. I cover the approach in the Lerins islands anchorage off Cannes.
5. Port-Cros
The wildest of the Hyeres islands and a national park, Port-Cros offers the best snorkelling in France along its marked underwater trail, where you follow a buoyed route over seagrass and rock watching the protected fish, which here are tame because no one has hunted them for decades. The mooring regime is strict to protect the park, with buoys rather than free anchoring in many bays, but the reward is water and marine life you find nowhere else on the coast. Pick up a park mooring and swim the trail. The detail on the mooring rules is in Port-Cros national park mooring.
6. The Glenan archipelago, south Brittany
To prove the Atlantic can do it too: the Glenan islands off Concarneau enclose a shallow inner sea of white sand and water so clear and pale that visitors compare it to the tropics. It is colder than the Med, properly bracing even in August, but on a hot settled day the swimming over the white sand between Saint-Nicolas and Bananec is as good as anywhere in France. Anchor in sand off La Pie or in La Chambre and swim in the turquoise shallows. It is a long way from Provence in every sense, but I could not leave it off a swimming list. I write it up in full as the Glenan archipelago anchorage.
7. The Frioul islands, off Marseille
A short hop off the Vieux Port, the Frioul archipelago is the swimming spot that Marseille locals keep for themselves. The calanque of Saint-Esteve and the narrow channel between the islands of Ratonneau and Pomegues give you clear, sheltered water close to a major city, which is a rare combination. The seabed is rock and sand, the holding is decent in the right spots, and the swimming over the rocks is excellent for snorkelling. It is busier at weekends when the city comes out to play, but on a weekday morning you can have a cove almost to yourself a mile from a metropolis. I cover the islands in the Marseille Vieux Port and Frioul guide.
8. Palombaggia and the southern Corsican gulfs
If you can get your boat to Corsica, the swimming moves up another level. The bays around Porto-Vecchio in the south, Palombaggia and Santa Giulia and the wilder coves beyond, have white sand and water of a clarity that shames even the Calanques, shelving turquoise over pale sand with red rocks framing the coves. It is a long way from Provence and the crossing needs respect, but the reward is the best island swimming in France. Anchor on the sand, mind the seagrass which is protected here as everywhere, and swim in water that looks Caribbean. I write up the area in the Porto-Vecchio southern gulfs guide.
Swimming from the boat, sensibly
A few habits keep boat swimming a pleasure rather than a worry. Always swim with the engine off and the propeller still, and rig a boarding ladder you can reach from the water, because climbing back aboard a topsides in a chop is harder than it looks. Watch for the offshore drift in any breeze, because a boat at anchor sits head to wind and the swimmer downwind has to work back. Keep an eye on other traffic in busy calanques, where day boats come and go fast. And anchor on clean sand every time, both for the holding and for the seagrass.
On the seagrass point specifically, it is worth being precise because the rules have real teeth now. Posidonia grows in depths from the surface down to about 40 metres and shows on the seabed as dark patches against the pale sand. Drop your anchor on the sand, lay your chain so it does not drag across the meadow, and use a seabed-mapping app to confirm where the clean ground is before you let go. Boats over 24 metres face the strictest rules and must keep clear of the meadows entirely, but the principle applies to all of us: the clear water you came to swim in depends on the seagrass that the anchors are killing, so anchoring well is not just legally smart, it protects the very thing that makes these spots worth the sail. For a settled-weather swimming cruise that strings several of the Hyeres spots together, the settled-weather anchorages off Hyeres round-up is where I would start planning.
Get those right and the water off the swim ladder is the best argument I know for keeping a boat at all.
