Toutes les nouvelles de Cabotages en un clin d'œil ...
_2.jpg)
Your ad here
The gulf of Saint Tropez
FOUR VILLAGES AND THREE SEASONS OF SAILING PLEASURE
The Gulf of Saint Tropez should be avoided during the summer season. But it is an absolute must from autumn to spring. Let’s go on a short tour of the Gulf on Maupassant’s boat, Bel-Ami:
“We left Saint Raphaël at about eight o’clock this morning with a strong northwest breeze (…). The sea in the gulf, though it had no waves, was w
hite with foam, white like a mass of soapsuds, for the wind, the terrible wind from Fréjus which blows almost every morning, seemed to throw itself on the water as though it would tear it to pieces, raising a rolling mass of little waves of froth, scattered one moment, reformed the next.
The people at the port having assured us that this squall would fall toward eleven o’clock, we decided upon starting with three reefs in and the storm-jib”.
This took place at the end of the 1880s. Guy de Maupassant, on his yacht Bel-Ami, was heading towards Saint-Tropez one spring day, a certain 12 April, when the biting off-shore wind is capable of throwing a ship on her beam ends without even lifting the waves.
STORMS AT A FIXED TIME
There is another season when storms are capable of rising without a breath of air. There is no warning of gusts of wind pinned up at the harbour master’s office or a special weather report on Channel 16. Nevertheless, twice a day, both in calm periods and during soft thermal breezes, you can experience the most boat-wrecking cross swell, the most hull-banging breakers and backwater which seems to have the compass pointing in all directions. You cannot pass through the Gulf of Saint-Tropez in the morning a
nd evening, so unless you choose to sail at dawn or at twilight or – even more risky – when the sun is at its highest between the champagne-olives and cognac-cigar period, you are guaranteed of squalls.
Long-distance cruisers and luxury yachts suddenly appear from the depth of the Marines de Cogolin port, from the old port of Saint-Tropez and from all the moorings along the Gulf and sail off to the open sea. Or at least that is what we think. As, once they have sailed past the Pointe de la Rabiou (Rabiou headland), they head full steam to the right in the direction of the Pampelonne beach. A new mooring, four thousand miles later. And in the evening when they return, the posidonia which have been pulled from the bottom of the bay won’t even have the time to dry on the anchor that it will be dropped again in the Gulf.
But, the most dangerous element for a coasting sailor is the cause of this hotchpotch of wakes: the yachts. Or rather their captains who, like long-distance lorry drivers on the motorway, think that the size, weight and power of the gaff abolish rules on priority and decorum. Move over!
But we know all of this already. From 1 July to 31 August, we sail in front of the gulf in the same way as we weather the Sicié cape on bad days, at three miles from the shore. And as far as entering is concerned…
FROM SEPTEMBER TO JUNE
But from September to June the area becomes the wonder that we can once again enjoy free from danger, dreaming as if we were for a moment arriving at the port on Bel-Ami:
“Far off in front of me I perceive the towers and the buoys that mark the breakers on both sides, at the opening of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez.
The first tower is called “Tour des Sardinaux” and marks a regular shoal of rocks, level with the top of the water, some of which just show the tips of their brown heads; the second one has been christened “Balise de la Sèche à l’huile” (Buoy of the oily Cuttlefish).”
This cuttlefish was so treacherous that the older inhabitants used to light fires there to point it out to boats. The oil lamps that were burned there have given their name to this dangerous reef that perhaps some wreckers have also been able to use to their advantage.
“We now reach the entrance of the gulf, which extends back between two ridges of mountains and forests as far as the village of Grimaud, built at the very extremity, on a height. The ancient castle of Grimaldi, a tall ruin that overlooks the village, appears in the distant haze like the evocation of some fairy scene.”
Another evocation: Port Grimaud today closes off the Gulf with its houses, lanes and channels in a trompe l’oeil. What a quaint Provencal tale we are told by this architectural fiction. Another beautiful story from the Midi is also that of Cogolin. Its blazon, which proudly hangs from the ridge of the Town Hall, is a cockerel. The very one that Saint-Tropez has always blamed it from stealing from the legend of its martyr and founder (see the following pages).
“Saint-Tropez, situated at the entry of the lovely gulf, formerly called Gulf of Grimaud, is the capital of the little Saracen kingdom, of which nearly every village, built on the summit of a peak in order to secure it from attack, is still full of Moorish houses with their arcades, narrow windows, and inner courtyards, where tall palm trees have grown up and are now higher than the roofs.”
STORIES OF PETTY LOCAL QUARRELS
Another usurpation. Saint Tropez imposed its heritage to the detriment of the former capital of the barony of Grimaud for which it was however the vassal. Politics were vanquished by the Economy. The castle of Grimaldi was beginning to collapse when Saint Tropez was building up its naval prosperity.
Another neighbourhood story? Do you know why the bell tower of Saint Tropez only has a clock face on three sides and not on its north-facing side? Because the people from Saint Tropez did not want the people from Sainte-Maxime to “steal” the time from them… Clochemerle (Gabriel Chevalier’s 1934 novel about a town in the Beaujolais that tears itself apart over the proposed construction of a pissoir (an outdoor male lavatory)) does not only exist in the Beaujolais. Indeed stories of petty local quarrels are universal!
Let us finish our cruise on Bel-Ami on this day of April and promise to come back here during the out-of-season period to take advantage in turn of these four villages at a time when they have their most beautiful colours.
“The wind has fallen. The gulf looks like an immense calm lake, into which, taking advantage of the last puffs of the squall, we slowly make our way. To the right of the channel, Sainte-Maxime, a little white port, is mirrored in the water which reflects the houses topsy-turvy, and reproduces them as distinctly as on shore. Opposite, Saint-Tropez appears, guarded by an old fort.”
Guy de Maupassant, Sur l’Eau, 1888.
