A full lap of Corsica is about 240 nautical miles of coastline, and it is the rare Mediterranean cruise that genuinely earns the word circumnavigation. You round real capes. You pass through a notorious strait. You anchor under a mountain that still has snow on it in June. Two weeks is the sweet spot: long enough to do it without making every day a delivery, short enough that a typical charter or summer cruise can fit it in. I have sailed the loop twice, once clockwise and once the other way, and I am going to lay out the version I would recommend to a first-timer, with honest distances and the decisions that actually matter.
Which Direction to Go
The prevailing wind in summer arrives from the northwest, which is the single biggest factor in how the trip feels. Going anticlockwise (south down the west coast first, then back up the east) tends to put that wind behind you for the long west-coast legs, which is where most of the scenery and most of the exposure live. That is the direction I would pick for a first lap, and the rest of this plan assumes it.
The two pinch points are the north cape and the strait in the south. Cap Corse, the long finger at the top of the island, accelerates the wind and kicks up a sea where the coastal flow meets the open Ligurian. The Bouches de Bonifacio at the bottom is its own beast, narrowing to about 11 km (under 6 nautical miles) at the tightest part, with currents of 3 to 4 knots and a scatter of reefs around the Lavezzi islands. You plan the whole trip around catching both of those in settled weather. Everything else flexes.
Where to Start
If you are crossing from the mainland you can begin almost anywhere, but the cleanest start for an anticlockwise loop is Calvi or Saint-Florent in the northwest. I have covered the open-water leg from the Riviera in detail in the crossing from the mainland to Corsica guide, so I will pick up the story from a first Corsican landfall.
Calvi gives you a proper marina, a citadel to walk around, and a long sweep of bay to anchor in once the day boats clear. It is a good place to provision hard before you head down the wilder west coast, where supplies thin out fast. Top up water and fuel here. The next reliable fuel of any size is a long way south.
Days One to Four: The West Coast and Its Reserves
The west coast is why people sail Corsica. From Calvi you run south past the Golfe de Galeria toward the headline act, the Gulf of Porto, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list and contains the Scandola reserve and the Calanche of Piana.
This is where you slow down. Scandola is strictly protected, and the rules are genuinely strict: anchoring is prohibited across the whole marine reserve and you cannot land or swim inside it, even from your own boat. You sail through and you look, and that is all. I have written the detail of what you can and cannot do in the Scandola reserve and the west coast guide, because it is the kind of place where getting it wrong means a fine and, worse, contributing to the damage that is already threatening the site.
The practical anchorage for this stretch is Girolata, the little bay just south of Scandola with a fort, a handful of restaurants reachable only by boat or on foot, and a cluster of mooring buoys. Get there early in the season or early in the day, because it fills, and the holding under the buoy field is patchy. From Girolata the Calanche of Piana is a short hop, blood-red granite towers dropping straight into clear water. Anchor off and dinghy in.
Distances here are short, 15 to 25 miles a day, but you will want the time. This is not a coast to rush.
Days Five and Six: Ajaccio and the Sanguinaires
South of Porto the coast runs down to the Gulf of Ajaccio. The Iles Sanguinaires at the mouth of the gulf catch the evening light and give you a dramatic run in toward the city. Ajaccio is Napoleon's birthplace and the biggest town on the west coast, which means it is your best chance to reprovision, do laundry, fix anything broken, and eat a proper meal ashore that you did not cook yourself.
The marinas (Tino Rossi in the old port, and the larger Charles Ornano) can be busy in August, so call ahead on the VHF working channel. Anchoring in the gulf is possible but the new posidonia protections apply here as everywhere in French waters, so anchor on sand and check the seabed before you drop. I have separate notes on the Gulf of Ajaccio if you want to linger, and it is worth a day longer than most itineraries give it.
Days Seven and Eight: Down to the Strait
From Ajaccio the coast trends southeast toward Bonifacio, with Propriano and the Golfe du Valinco as a comfortable midway stop. The water down here turns from green to an almost tropical turquoise as you approach the granite of the deep south.
And then there is Bonifacio itself, which is one of the most extraordinary arrivals in the Mediterranean. The town sits on white limestone cliffs that have been undercut by the sea, and the harbour hides up a long fjord-like inlet that you cannot see until you are almost on top of it. I have written a full piece on arriving into Bonifacio harbour because the entrance deserves its own attention, and the marina (around 350 berths, roughly 150 kept for visitors, VHF channel 9) is small enough to fill in high season.
Before you commit to the strait, this is the place to study the weather hard. The Bouches de Bonifacio strait is where the trip can come unstuck, and Bonifacio is the natural place to sit and wait for the right day.
Days Nine and Ten: The Strait, the Lavezzi and the Far South
Pick your weather and cross the strait, or simply day-sail out to the Lavezzi islands, about 6 nautical miles southeast of Bonifacio. These granite islets sit in some of the clearest water in France, and they are a regulated nature reserve. Anchoring is forbidden within 40 metres of the shore, your boat must be under 24 metres, and you may only anchor in one of the seven buoyed zones, never on posidonia. The full breakdown lives in the Lavezzi islands mooring rules guide, and it is essential reading before you point the bow at them, because rangers do check.
Rounding the southeast corner of the island brings you to a string of the finest anchorages in Corsica: Rondinara with its near-perfect horseshoe of sand, and the bays around Porto-Vecchio. I have collected the best of them in the southern Corsica anchorages guide. This is reward country after the focus of the strait, and I always build in a slack day here for swimming and doing nothing.
Days Eleven and Twelve: The East Coast Run North
The east coast is the unsung part of the loop. It is flatter, straighter, and less dramatic than the west, which means it is where you make miles. From Porto-Vecchio the coast runs north past Solenzara toward Bastia, and the legs get longer, 30 to 40 miles a day, because the anchorages are fewer and the shore is more open.
Solenzara makes a good staging marina. Bastia, the commercial and ferry capital of the north, is a working port with a old harbour worth a wander and excellent provisioning. Watch the ferry traffic on the approach; the fast boats to the mainland come and go at speed.
Days Thirteen and Fourteen: Cap Corse and Back to the Start
The final piece is the rounding of Cap Corse, and you save it for last on purpose, because by now you know your boat and you have learned to read the local weather. The cape accelerates the northwesterly, and the sea off the tip can be lumpy even on a moderate day. Round it in the morning before the wind builds, give the headland a respectful offing, and watch for the wind shadow and then the sudden gust as you come back into the lee on the west side.
Macinaggio on the east side of the cape and Saint-Florent on the west are your two anchors for this leg. Saint-Florent, sitting at the base of the cape with the Agriates desert stretching west, is a beautiful place to close the loop, and from there it is a short run back to Calvi and the start. The detail of this corner is in the Saint-Florent and Cap Corse guide.
A Word on the Boat and the Crew
Corsica is not a beginner's coast, and the loop is not a beginner's trip, but it is well within reach of a competent crew on a sound boat. The legs that matter are the offshore mainland crossing at the start, the strait, and Cap Corse. None of them is technically hard in good weather. All of them are unforgiving in bad weather. That asymmetry is the whole skill of the trip: knowing the difference and being patient enough to wait.
I would want a boat that motors well, because the Mediterranean alternates between too much wind and none at all, often on the same day. I would want ground tackle I trust, because you will anchor far more than you berth, and the holding ranges from perfect sand to thin patches over rock. An oversized anchor and plenty of chain pay for themselves the first windy night in an open bay. And I would want the autopilot working, because the long east-coast legs are dull and tiring to hand-steer.
If you are buying a boat for this kind of cruising rather than chartering, the structural soundness of the hull matters more than the cosmetics, and I always come back to the basics of a proper survey, which I have set out in my used sailboat hull inspection checklist. A circumnavigation is exactly the sort of trip that finds the weaknesses a flat-water summer never would.
Honest Notes on Money and Provisioning
Two weeks around Corsica is not cheap in high season. Marina berths in Bonifacio and Ajaccio in peak August can run well over 100 euros a night for a mid-size cruiser, and Bonifacio in particular charges a premium for the privilege of that harbour. You save real money by anchoring, which is also where the best of Corsica is anyway. Water and fuel points are spread out, so the discipline is to top up whenever you are alongside rather than waiting until you are low. I have put the supply logistics together in the Corsica provisioning and water harbours guide, which is the kind of unglamorous planning that keeps the trip smooth.
Weather Is the Itinerary
If there is one thing I would press on a first-timer, it is that this plan is a skeleton, not a schedule. The mistral and the libeccio do not care about your two-week window. Build in slack days, especially before the strait and before Cap Corse, and be willing to sit in port for a day when the forecast says so. The cruisers who get into trouble around Corsica are almost always the ones running to a fixed return flight. The ones who have the best fortnight of their lives are the ones who let the weather write the running order. For the seasonal picture, the Corsica weather for visitors guide is where I would start your planning, well before you ever slip the lines.
