The first time I rounded the headland into Rondinara, the wind dropped, the swell flattened, and the depth sounder started reading numbers I trusted. After three days of motoring into a stubborn south-westerly along the Sardinian coast, that horseshoe of white sand felt like a reward. I dropped the hook in five metres over clean sand, paid out scope, dug it in, and went swimming before I had even tidied the cockpit.
That is the short version. The longer version is that south Corsica rewards a skipper who reads the chart and the forecast together, and punishes one who treats every pretty bay as a guaranteed night's sleep. This is what I have learned dropping anchor along this coast over four seasons.
What makes the bay reliable
The bay sits roughly halfway between Bonifacio and Porto-Vecchio, about 15 nautical miles from either, on the south-east corner of the island. The shape does the work: two rocky arms reach out and enclose a near-circular basin, so anything from the north, west or south is broken up before it reaches you. The seabed is sand, the good kind, and your anchor will bite first time in most spots.
The number to remember is depth. The central anchoring ground runs around 4 to 5 metres, shoaling steadily towards the beach. That is shallow enough to see your anchor through the water on a calm morning and deep enough to swing without grounding on a falling glass. Mediterranean tides are tiny, so you are not factoring in metres of rise and fall, but a strong libeccio can push a surge into the bay that adds half a metre of slop.
The weakness is the east. Rondinara is open to easterlies, and when the wind clocks round to that quarter the swell rolls straight in and the bay becomes a washing machine. If you wake to an east wind forecast, move to the northern lobe of the inlet where the headland gives partial cover, or leave early. I have done both. Leaving early is the better night's sleep.
Reading the buoyed zones
In July and August the inner bay is roped off with yellow swimming buoys, and they are not decorative. The reserved bathing areas sit in both the southern and northern parts of the inlet, and you must anchor outside them. The line is policed in season, and grounding your anchor inside a swimming zone is the fastest way to a conversation with the maritime authorities you would rather not have.
There is a tender pier in the middle of the bay, so getting ashore is easy. Ashore you will find a beach bar and restaurant, an ecological waste point, and a campsite minimarket about ten minutes' walk back where you can top up bread, water and a few basics. It is not a provisioning run, but it covers the gap between proper harbours. For a full stock-up you want one of the larger ports, and I have written separately about provisioning and water in Corsican harbours because getting that wrong is what cuts a cruise short.
Watch the rocks on the way in
Both peninsulas that close the bay throw out submerged rocks beyond the visible headland. Entering, give the points a wide berth and keep a lookout posted on the bow if the light is flat. The water is clear enough that you can usually see the bottom shelving, but afternoon glare off a westering sun flattens everything into one silver sheet, and that is exactly when boats touch. I enter Rondinara with the sun behind me whenever the timing allows.
The cluster of southern anchorages
Rondinara is the headline, but it is one stop in a string of good holding along the south coast, and treating it as part of a circuit takes the pressure off any single night.
Working west from Porto-Vecchio, the bays around Pointe de la Chiappa and the Golfe de Santa Giulia offer sand and turquoise water, though Santa Giulia gets very crowded and the swimming buoys eat into the usable space by mid-morning in August. Further south, the anchorages just outside Bonifacio give you a base for the harbour run without paying for a berth every night.
Then there are the islands. The Lavezzi archipelago, a few miles south-east of Bonifacio, is a nature reserve with designated zones and seasonal restrictions, and the holding in the marked spots is excellent on a settled day. I treat it as a daytime destination rather than an overnight one, because the protection is patchy and the reserve rules around overnight stays change year to year. If you are planning that leg, read up on the Lavezzi islands moorings before you go, because anchoring on the seagrass there is both banned and fineable.
Anchoring technique that actually holds
None of this matters if your ground tackle does not bite. On Corsican sand, my routine is simple and it has never let me down badly.
I motor slowly over my chosen spot and watch the sounder, looking for an even sandy bottom rather than the dark patches that mean posidonia seagrass. Anchoring in seagrass is poor holding and, increasingly, illegal across French Mediterranean waters, so I avoid the dark green every time. I drop in 4 to 6 metres, let the boat drift back, and lay out at least four times the depth in chain, more if there is any weight in the forecast. Then I set the engine astern at a fast idle for a slow count of twenty and watch a transit ashore. If the transit holds, the anchor holds.
I also dive on it. In water this clear there is no excuse not to put on a mask and look at the anchor lying on the bottom. Twice that habit has shown me a hook sitting on its side, ploughing, and I reset before it cost me a night.
What a southern week looks like
If I had a fresh week and started from Bonifacio, I would run east to anchor off the town the first night, cross to the south coast bays the second, spend a full day and night at Rondinara, then work up towards Porto-Vecchio and back, picking anchorages by the morning forecast rather than a fixed plan. The whole stretch is compact, the hops are short, and the holding is reliable as long as you respect the easterly weakness.
Corsica's south is not a place to sail to a rigid itinerary. The wind decides. A skipper who lets it decide, and who treats Rondinara as the prize it is rather than a certainty, will sleep well. Before you commit to the crossing legs around here, it is worth understanding Corsican weather for visitors, because the wind that makes Rondinara perfect one afternoon is the same wind that empties it by dawn.
One last practical note on the anchorage itself. The popular central ground fills fast in season, and by noon in August you may be choosing between a tight spot among the swimming buoys and a deeper berth further out where the holding is just as good but the swim ashore is longer. I would rather arrive by ten and take my pick than circle at two o'clock looking for a gap. The bay is generous, but it is not infinite, and the boats that anchor late are the ones that drag at three in the morning because they dropped in a hurry on the only patch left.
A tender with a reliable outboard changes the calculation entirely. From a deeper anchor spot the run to the pier is five minutes, and you keep the swinging room that the inner boats give up. I would take depth and space over a short row every time, and on a coast where the wind can shift overnight, that extra scope is cheap insurance.
If you are buying a boat to do this kind of cruising rather than chartering, the holding ground matters less than the hull under you, and the checks I run before any purchase are in my piece on buying a used sailboat. A boat that anchors well in Rondinara is no use if the keel bolts let go on the way there.
