Here is a thing I believe that will annoy half the people who read it: most of the anchoring friction in a crowded Riviera bay is caused not by bad luck or bad weather but by sailors who put out too little chain because they cannot be bothered to do the sum, and then blame the boat that swings into them. The Med is not the Channel. The rules of polite anchoring are different here, and a surprising number of otherwise competent visitors get them wrong and ruin an afternoon for everyone downwind.
I anchor in these bays forty or fifty nights a season. What follows is the etiquette as it actually works on a packed August afternoon off Cannes or in the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, not the version in the manual.
The first boat in sets the rules
The boat that anchors first in a spot has, by long convention, established its position and its swing. Everyone who comes after fits around it, not the other way round. If you arrive into a busy bay and drop your hook so close that the existing boat is now inside your swinging circle, you are in the wrong, regardless of how it works out, and if it goes pear-shaped in the night the responsibility is yours.
This sounds obvious and it is the single most violated rule on the coast. Late arrivals into a full bay squeeze into gaps that are not really gaps, because the gap is somebody's swing room. If the bay looks full, it is full. Go to the next one rather than become the boat everyone is watching with their fenders ready.
Match your neighbours, or anchor apart
Boats swing differently. A deep-keeled yacht and a flat-bottomed motor cruiser respond to wind and the small Mediterranean current at different rates and to different degrees, and when the breeze drops and the boats lie to whatever they please, mismatched neighbours sail around each other. The fix is simple: anchor near boats like yours, on similar scope, so you all swing together, or leave enough room that it does not matter.
In a tideless sea the swing is driven by wind, not stream, and on a light evening boats can end up pointing every which way. I give more room here than I would in a tidal harbour where everyone lies to the same current, precisely because there is no current to keep us aligned.
The scope argument, and why I will win it
This is the one I started with and the one I care about most. People arrive from tidal waters where they are used to short scope because the tide turns and the swing is controlled, and they put out the same short scope here. Then the wind gets up, the anchor that was barely set drags, and a boat that put out proper scope on clean sand gets a fibreglass visitor at two in the morning.
On clean Mediterranean sand, in 5 metres of water, put out real chain. The standard is not stingy. If you would not be happy to leave the boat and go ashore for lunch on the scope you have laid, you have not laid enough. The crowding in these bays is not an excuse for short scope; it is a reason to anchor somewhere less crowded so you can lay proper scope without hitting anyone. Too many people get this backwards, cramming in on short chain so they can fit, and then everyone is one gust away from a pile-up.
If the bay is so full that you cannot lay decent scope without swinging into someone, the bay is too full for you. That is not a hardship. There is always another bay on this coast within a short motor.
Stay off the grass, and not just for the law
The legal reason to anchor on sand rather than the protected posidonia seagrass is in the posidonia anchoring ban every visitor must know, and it is reason enough. But there is an etiquette reason too: the sand patches are a shared, finite resource in a bay full of grass, and the boat that drops on the only good sand and then lays a careless 270-degree swing across three other sand patches has hogged the legal anchoring for everyone. Drop tidily, lay your chain so it sits on sand through the swing, and do not sprawl. The current map of where Cote d'Azur anchoring is still allowed in 2026 shows how little clean sand there sometimes is, which is exactly why you share it.
Tender manners, the thing nobody admits to getting wrong
The anchored boats are not the problem on a Riviera afternoon. The tenders are. A planing tender driven flat-out through a packed anchorage throws a wash that sets every boat rolling and every drink sliding, and the person driving it is almost always somebody who would be furious if you did it to them. Slow down. Idle speed through an anchorage is not a courtesy, it is the rule, and the fact that the hire ribs ignore it does not make it optional for you.
Land your tender where you are meant to, not on somebody's swim platform or across a beach swimming area. And if you run a generator or play music, remember that sound carries flat across calm water for a remarkable distance; the boat you cannot quite see two hundred metres off can hear your playlist perfectly. I have been the boat with the considerate neighbour and the boat with the inconsiderate one, and the difference between a good night at anchor and a bad one is almost entirely the people around you.
The buoy zones change the etiquette too
More and more of these bays are becoming organised mooring zones, where you take a fixed buoy rather than dropping your own anchor. The etiquette shifts accordingly. You take the buoy you are allocated or the first free one, not the one with the best view that someone is clearly heading for. You do not raft three boats onto a buoy rated for one. And you do not drop an anchor in the middle of a buoy field because you fancy a spot the buoys do not cover, since your swinging anchored boat will foul the moored ones that cannot move.
The Lerins at Cannes are a good place to see this work, and I have written up the regime in detail in the Lerins islands anchorage off Cannes. The buoys take some of the judgement out of your hands, which I half resent and half appreciate. The half I appreciate is that they end the worst of the scope-and-swing arguments, because everyone is on a fixed point and nobody is dragging into anybody. The half I resent is that they turn a skill into a queue. Either way, in a buoy zone the rule is simple: behave as a guest in an organised space, not a free agent in open water.
When you drag, own it
You will drag at some point. Everyone does. The etiquette when you drag is to deal with it fast and not pretend it is not happening. Get the engine on, take the strain off, and re-anchor properly rather than letting the boat sail backwards through the fleet while you decide what to do. The boats downwind are watching, and the sailor who reacts quickly earns goodwill while the one who freezes earns a fender in the topsides and a reputation.
The flip side: if the boat near you starts to drag, a friendly shout and a hand fending off is worth more than a smug photograph for the forum. We are all one bad set away from being that boat.
The honest summary
Anchor first or fit in around those who did. Lay proper scope or move to where you can. Stay off the grass for the law and for your neighbours. Idle through the anchorage in the tender. Deal with your own drag. None of it is complicated, and almost all the trouble I see in these bays comes from visitors who treat a Mediterranean anchorage like a tidal one and crowd in on short chain. Do the opposite and you will be the boat nobody worries about, which on a packed August evening is the highest compliment a Riviera bay can pay you.
For where these bays are and how to reach them, the French Riviera sailing guide has the geography, and Saint-Tropez by sea covers the busiest water of the lot.
