South of the gloss of Saint-Tropez the peninsula turns suddenly wild. The three capes that guard its seaward end, Camarat, Taillat and Lardier, are a protected stretch of cliff, pine and red rock that feels a long way from the superyachts a few miles north. Rounding them is one of the most enjoyable short passages on this coast, and one of the easiest to get wrong if you treat the open water off the headlands as benign. It is not. It is exposed, it catches the swell, and it has a habit of being calm in the gulf and choppy the moment you clear the points.
The three capes
Coming round the bottom of the Saint-Tropez peninsula from north to south you meet them in order: Cap Camarat first, then Cap Taillat, then Cap Lardier. Camarat is the dominant one. It carries a lighthouse commissioned in 1831 that is among the tallest in France at nearly 130 metres above the sea, with a light visible out to around 60 km, automated since 1977 and controlled remotely from the Porquerolles light. That tower is your principal mark for the whole rounding.
The three capes sit close together. Lardier and Taillat lie roughly 7 km from Camarat, so the entire wild section is a short stretch, an hour or two of sailing rather than a day. Cap Taillat in the middle is the curiosity: a steep little headland joined to the mainland only by a fragile sand isthmus, so on the chart it almost looks like an island. The whole area is a protected reserve, which is part of why it has stayed so unspoilt, and it shapes where you are allowed to anchor.
What the headlands do to the sea
The thing to understand about this rounding is exposure. The gulf of Saint-Tropez to the north is reasonably sheltered, but the seaward face of these capes is open to the south and east, and any swell running up from those directions piles onto the points. You can leave a flat gulf and round Camarat into a noticeable sea with no change in the wind at all, simply because the swell that the gulf was sheltering you from is now hitting you square.
The wind to watch on this coast is the easterly, which builds a swell with a fair fetch and rolls it onto the southern capes, and of course the mistral, which can reach down here as a hard northwesterly even though the worst of it lives further west in the gulf of lion crossing plan. On a settled summer day with light airs and a low swell, the rounding is a gentle thing. On a day with any easterly swell about, give the points a wider berth than you think you need, because the sea steepens close in over the shoaling ground off the capes.
The anchorages
The reward for the rounding is a string of small anchorages tucked into the bays between and behind the capes, places that the protected status has kept beautiful. L'Escalet, on the southwestern side, is the best known, a cove with clear water reachable in good conditions, and there are smaller bites of sand around Taillat that make fine lunch stops in settled weather.
The catch is the protection. This is a reserve, the seabed in much of it is posidonia seagrass, and anchoring rules on the Cote d'Azur have tightened sharply in recent years to protect it. You cannot simply drop the hook anywhere over the green patches. Check the current regulations and the zoning before you anchor here, because the rules change and the fines are real. I have set out the wider picture in the posidonia anchoring ban guide and the current cote d'azur anchoring rules, and both apply in full to these capes. The short version: read the seabed on the chart, look for sand or the regulated buoy zones, and stay off the seagrass.
A point of seamanship worth spelling out here. The wind on the seaward face of these capes can differ sharply from the wind in the gulf you have just left, because the high ground of the peninsula bends and accelerates the airflow as it spills over the points. I have come round Camarat to find ten knots more breeze than I left Saint-Tropez with, on a day the forecast called settled. So reef before you round if there is any doubt, rather than discovering the difference with the rail down off Cap Lardier with the swell building.
How it links to the Riviera passage
These capes are the southern corner of the run between Saint-Tropez and the islands of Hyeres. If you are heading west towards Porquerolles and the iles d'hyeres in depth, rounding Cap Camarat and Cap Lardier is the first act of that passage, the point where you leave the gulf and commit to the open coast towards the islands. Plan the rounding and the onward leg as one, because once you are round Lardier the next real shelter is some way west.
Coming the other way, from the islands towards Saint-Tropez, the capes are your gateway into the gulf, and rounding Lardier then Camarat brings you up towards the famous harbour. Either way, the capes are the hinge between the sheltered gulf and the more exposed coast to the south and west.
Timing and the season
The capes do not have a tidal gate to time, which is one of the gifts of the Mediterranean, so the timing question is purely about wind and swell rather than a clock. In practice that means the same morning-versus-afternoon logic that runs along this whole coast. The thermal sea breeze tends to build through the day, and on the open southern face of the capes that breeze, added to any residual swell, is what turns an easy rounding into a bouncy one. I round in the forenoon when I can and keep the afternoon for the sheltered water on the far side.
Season matters too. In July and August the waters off Saint-Tropez are some of the busiest in the Mediterranean, and the anchorages around the capes fill with day boats from the resorts. The reserve status keeps the shore wild but it does not keep the sea quiet in high summer, so if you want the capes to yourself, the shoulder months of June and September give you the same warm water and far fewer hulls. The light is also kinder for the cliffs and the red rock outside the peak weeks.
A short plan for the rounding
- Use the Cap Camarat lighthouse as your principal mark for the whole rounding.
- Expect the sea to build as you clear the gulf and meet the swell off the seaward face of the capes.
- Watch the easterly swell above all, and on any easterly day give the points a wider offing than the chart distance suggests.
- Treat the bays as a reserve: check the anchoring zoning and the posidonia rules before you drop the hook.
- Plan the rounding and the onward leg towards Hyeres or Saint-Tropez as a single passage, because shelter is sparse on the open side.
There is a real pleasure in this short stretch of coast that the rest of the Riviera struggles to match. You leave the moneyed bustle of Saint-Tropez behind, round the tall white tower of Camarat, and within a mile you are sailing past empty red cliffs and pine to a turquoise cove that could be anywhere remote. The capes are the reminder that the Cote d'Azur, under all the glamour, is still a coast that demands you read the swell and respect the headlands. Round them on a settled morning and they give you the best few miles of the whole peninsula.
