Ask a hundred French sailors for their favourite anchorage and a good chunk will name somewhere in the Iles d'Hyeres. The Golden Isles, as the tourist board calls them, are three islands strung off the Var coast south of the town of Hyeres, and between them they pack in more good cruising than anywhere else on the Provence shore. They are also wildly different from one another: one is a low, sandy holiday island, one is a strictly protected national park, and one belongs to the navy. Get the differences clear before you sail, because what you can and cannot do varies enormously from one to the next.
The three islands, and how far apart
Start with the geography, because it shapes everything. From Hyeres, Porquerolles, the westernmost and largest island, lies about 5 miles out. Port-Cros, in the middle, is roughly 15 miles from Hyeres and sits between Porquerolles and the third island, Le Levant, to the east. They are close enough together that you can island-hop between all three in a single day if you want to, but each deserves longer.
The approach from the mainland takes you past the Giens peninsula and through the Petite or Grande Passe; the deeper Grande Passe to the south is the safer choice in a swell. Once you are among the islands the water is gorgeous, but the wind funnels between them and the mistral reaches here with plenty of force, so do not be lulled by the holiday-brochure calm.
Porquerolles
Porquerolles is the one most visitors fall for first. It has a proper village around a small harbour, beaches of pale sand on the sheltered north coast, and a wild, cliff-bound south coast that you would not want to be near in any southerly. The little marina takes visiting yachts when there is room, which in July and August there usually is not, so most of us pick up one of the roughly 50 mooring buoys laid off the island instead. The buoys are regulated and limited to boats of about 12 metres maximum, so larger yachts need to think harder. The classic anchorages are off the northern beaches, the Plage d'Argent and the Plage de la Courtade, on sand in settled weather, but the buoy fields have eaten into where you can freely drop a hook, for the usual posidonia-protection reasons.
It is worth understanding the wider context of those restrictions before you arrive, because they are not unique to Hyeres; the whole coast is tightening up, and I have set out the detail in the posidonia anchoring ban in France. The companion piece on Cote d'Azur anchoring rules for 2026 gives the year's specifics. Ashore, Porquerolles is car-free, laced with vineyards and cycle tracks, and the village restaurants are pleasant if you accept island prices.
Port-Cros
Port-Cros is the jewel and the one with the rules. Together with the smaller Ile de Bagaud it forms a national park, France's first marine national park, created in 1963, and the regulations are strict in a way that trips up newcomers every season. Navigation, anchoring and fishing are prohibited within 600 metres of the protected coastlines. You may not anchor freely in the famous bays; instead the harbour and approaches now run on a mooring zone, a ZMEL, of around 68 buoys laid on ecological anchors. Anchoring in the Passe de Bagaud, the channel between the Port-Cros harbour and Bagaud island, is now banned outright to protect the seabed and the posidonia beds.
The practical upshot: pick up a buoy in the harbour bay if one is free, do not try to wedge an anchor into the protected coves, and respect the 600-metre line. The reward is an island that feels genuinely wild, thick with Aleppo pine and maquis, with an underwater snorkelling trail off the Plage de la Palud that is one of the best easy snorkels in France. If you are coming straight here, my dedicated guide to Port-Cros national park mooring walks through the buoy system and the fees in more detail, and the broader overview of Porquerolles and the Hyeres islands ties the archipelago together.
Le Levant: leave it alone
The third island, Le Levant, is mostly off-limits and you should treat it that way. A large part of it belongs to the French military, with a missile-testing range, and yachts are asked to pass well clear of the naval facilities. There is no sheltered anchorage worth the risk, and anchoring and cruising along the military shore are prohibited. The far western tip is famous for a long-established naturist village, but for a passing boat the message is simple: keep your distance and carry on. It is not a cruising destination.
The wind, again
I keep coming back to the mistral because it is the defining hazard of Provence and the islands offer only partial shelter. The mistral is a cold, gusty northwesterly that can blow Force 7 to 9 under a clear sky and arrives with the kind of speed that strands the unwary. Among the Hyeres islands the danger is being caught on the wrong, exposed side of an island when it fills in, because the north anchorages of Porquerolles that are perfect in a southerly become a lee shore the moment the mistral arrives. My piece on reading the mistral before it traps you is the homework for this whole coast: watch the gradient over the Gulf of Lion, give yourself an escape, and never assume an island will protect you from every direction.
Provisioning and the mainland base
There are facilities on the islands, but you do not want to rely on them. Porquerolles village has a few shops and restaurants, but prices reflect the fact that everything arrives by ferry, and Port-Cros has only the most basic provisions. The sensible plan is to stock up and fuel on the mainland before you cross. Hyeres has its marinas and the big Port Saint-Pierre, and the Giens peninsula and La Tour Fondue offer launching and ferry links; the town behind has full-size supermarkets and chandlery. Fill water and diesel there, do a proper provision run, and treat the islands as somewhere you arrive self-sufficient.
Water is the thing people forget. On a buoy off Porquerolles or in the Port-Cros mooring zone you have no shore water unless you go into the small marina, so carry enough for the swimming and rinsing you will inevitably do in that clear water. The islands are also a national-park and reserve environment, which means you take your rubbish away with you, you do not discharge a holding tank inshore, and you respect the no-go zones rather than treating them as guidelines. Get caught pumping out in a protected bay and the fine is not trivial.
Stringing it together
The islands sit at the western end of the Cote d'Azur run, and many crews fold them into a bigger trip; the natural next leg eastward is covered in the route from Monaco to Saint-Tropez by sea. On their own, I would give the Hyeres islands four days minimum. A good shape: a night on a Porquerolles buoy with a day exploring the village and beaches by bike, a passage across to Port-Cros for the snorkelling trail and a buoy in the harbour bay, a day swinging round the protected coast at a respectful distance, then back to the mainland past Le Levant with a wide berth.
Go in June or September. July and August bring the day-tripper ferries, packed buoy fields and the worst of the mistral risk in the long settled spells that suddenly break. Out of the peak, with a careful eye on the wind and a clear understanding of which island allows what, the Iles d'Hyeres are about as good as Mediterranean island cruising gets in France.
