In fashionable St Tropez it’s near impossible to get a mooring, says Emma Horsley of French agency Leggett. “An owner of a Port de St Tropez property recently sold his berth before his house,” she says.
Boat owners look instead to nearby Port Grimaud (a Venetian-style canal village offering 1,100 moorings) or Marines de Cogolin (a residential marina with 1,600 berths) where you can get a space for a 82ft-long boat for €45,000 until the end of 2017 through mooringspot.com. There’s also a two-bedroom apartment nearby, in the pretty Provençal-style Port Cogolin village for €490,000 with Leggett.
Yachties who like the reassurance of seeing their boat from their home are being targeted by new residential marinas. In Portopiccolo, north of Trieste in Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia, owners of the 434 private residences on the five-star hotel development will get priority on leasing one of the 121 moorings. They cost from €3,500 per year (plus 22 per cent VAT), rising to €22,000 for a 79ft berth.
The harbour at Portopiccolo, north of Trieste in Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia
Twenty of the current owners, who are mainly Italians, already have a boat immediately outside their home, and 50 more can glimpse their craft from their hillside terrace or borgo townhouse. Properties start at €440,000 for a one-bedroom flat, and reach €4 million for the penthouse (portopiccolosistiana.it).