The Iles d'Hyeres are a fair-weather cruiser's dream and a heavy-weather cruiser's headache. The three islands, Porquerolles, Port-Cros and Le Levant, sit in the gulf of Hyeres with anchorages on every aspect, which is wonderful in settled air and treacherous when the wind gets up, because no single bay is sheltered from all directions. The art here is reading the forecast and matching the anchorage to it, then moving when the wind shifts. After several seasons working these islands I have a circuit I trust in settled weather, and a clear sense of when to give up and run for a harbour. Here is how I read the place.
The wind that decides everything
Two winds shape the gulf. The mistral, the cold north-westerly, is the one everyone fears, though in high summer it blows less often and less hard. The one that actually catches people out is the marin, the south-easterly sea breeze, which builds through the afternoon and in high season can reach Force 5 or 6 by late afternoon. The practical consequence is brutal: a bay that is calm and tenable at breakfast can be untenable by four o'clock. So the settled-weather game here is not just picking a fine day, it is picking the right bay for the time of day and being ready to move when the marin fills in.
That is why the islands have anchorages on every aspect. The skill is using the south-coast bays in the morning, then shifting to a north-shore bay sheltered from the marin for the afternoon and night.
Porquerolles: a bay for every wind
Porquerolles is the largest island and has the widest choice. The north shore bays, Plage d'Argent and the anchorages near the village, are sheltered from the mistral and shelve into clean sand, which makes them the dependable overnight choice when the north-westerly is the threat. Plage d'Argent in particular sits out of the mistral and gives easy, safe swimming close in.
The south coast is the morning treat. Plage Notre-Dame, regularly called one of the finest beaches in Europe, lets you anchor in 3 to 6 metres over fine sand and is sheltered from the east, but it should be abandoned in any mistral and it is exposed to the marin by afternoon. So I use Notre-Dame for a morning swim and lunch, then move round to the north shore before the sea breeze builds. La Galere, in the south-east, is protected from the west wind and the easternmost beach is sheltered from the mistral, with a seabed that shelves quickly off a short plateau. For the wider rundown, the survey of anchorages at Porquerolles and the Hyeres islands covers the full set.
The Giens peninsula bays opposite are worth knowing as a fallback: La Badine, under Giens, is protected from the mistral and gives a sheltered overnight when the islands are getting the sea breeze.
Port-Cros: a national park where you take a buoy
Port-Cros, the smallest of the three, is a national park and a marine reserve, and anchoring here is heavily managed. The park has laid 68 ecological mooring buoys, 60 of them for boats up to 15 metres in four mooring areas, 5 for boats between 15 and 30 metres, and the rest for residents. Anchoring is banned outright for any vessel over 30 metres in the marine heart of the park.
For most of us this is good news rather than a restriction: you pick up a buoy in a sheltered anchorage in around 8 metres, the holding problem disappears, and you are not damaging the seabed. The buoys book up fast in season, so I arrive early in the day. The bays here are sheltered from different quarters, so the same forecast-reading discipline applies, but the buoy takes the worry of dragging out of the equation, which on a park's clean bottom matters. Treating the seabed gently is the whole point of the park, and the wider habit of low-impact anchoring for wildlife is exactly what these buoy fields are designed to enforce.
Le Levant and the gulf bays
Le Levant is largely a military zone and a naturist island, so cruising anchorages are limited, but the western end has bays that work in settled offshore winds. More useful for most cruisers are the mainland gulf anchorages and the buoy zones around the islands, where the pricing follows the standard Mediterranean pattern: roughly 0.58 euros per square metre including VAT for the first two nights at the managed Port-Cros zones, with the rate doubling for each night beyond two, which works out around 25 euros a night for a typical cruising boat. That structure is deliberate, cheap for a short stay and punishing for a long one, to keep the moorings turning over. Treat the buoys as one or two-night stops.
The cost case for anchoring here
The Iles d'Hyeres are a place where anchoring pays handsomely, because the alternative is expensive. Berths on this coast are dear even by Mediterranean standards: a 12-metre boat pays in the region of 5,000 to 8,000 euros a year for a permanent berth in the Var ports, and a transient summer night in a popular marina runs far above what you would pay anywhere on the Atlantic. Against that, a night on a Port-Cros park buoy at around 25 euros, or a free night at anchor on the north shore of Porquerolles, is a bargain that adds up fast over a fortnight. The pattern that works is to anchor or take a buoy most nights and use a marina only every few days for fuel, water and a proper shower. The honest comparison is in the guide to anchoring versus a marina in France on cost, and on this stretch of coast the maths leans hard towards staying off the pontoons.
When two anchors earn their keep
The Hyeres bays get crowded in August, and crowding plus a wind shift is where trouble starts. In a tight, busy anchorage where everyone is swinging on a single hook, a Bermudian-rigged afternoon marin can set the whole fleet sailing around at anchor on different scopes. This is the one place I sometimes set a second anchor to limit my swing and keep clear of the boat that anchored too close behind me. The technique is worth practising before you need it, and the method is laid out in the guide to using two anchors in a crowded bay.
The other discipline, always, is the seagrass. Drop on the pale sand, never on the dark Posidonia, which is protected (fines for yachts over 24 metres reach 150,000 euros) and which fouls an anchor in any case. The free DONIA app maps the meadows, and aiming for sand also gives you the clearest water to swim in. The full reasoning is in the Posidonia anchoring ban in France.
The settled-weather circuit
My standard fine-weather day in the Iles d'Hyeres goes like this. Morning swim and lunch on the south coast, Plage Notre-Dame for choice. Move round to a north-shore bay or a Giens anchorage before the marin builds in the early afternoon. Overnight sheltered from whichever wind the forecast threatens, on sand or on a buoy. And the moment a real mistral is forecast, give the islands up and run for a harbour, because none of these anchorages is a heavy-weather hole.
That is the honest character of the place. In settled summer weather the Iles d'Hyeres are among the loveliest cruising grounds in France, three islands of clear water and white sand a few miles apart. But they ask you to keep reading the wind all day, and to treat a worsening forecast as a signal to leave rather than a challenge to ride out. Get that judgement right and you will have a string of perfect nights at anchor; get it wrong and you will spend one of them very awake.
