Ciotat used to be a centre of industrial shipbuilding, and the gantries and so on are all still there. When the yards closed down, local shipworkers organised a sit-in to prevent the land being taken over for seaside real estate. Their fath and hard work have paid off; Ciotat has become a major centre for building and renovating superyachts, mostly but not only motorboats. A real success for everyone involved and it shows that there are real regeneration opportunities in the leisure marine sector.
So, the gantries and so on are still there. Just north is the entrance to the Vieux Port; despite what Heikell says, you can go in there and tie up on the quay (far port edge of the basin). This puts you under the yacht club, and in the centre of town. It is however very noisy at night (lots of clubs), and they will move you constantly if a superyacht needs a space on the quay. As the man from the Capitainerie said, this is a commercial harbour, not a marina. It is roughly the same price as the Port de Plaisance. (?'?26-29 per night for a 12m boat, including a 50 centime tax per person and including electricity and water.)
This marina consists of two basins, protected from the gulf by large breakwaters. The visitors pontoon (and nearly all visitors) is in the southern of the two, and that is the entrance in the picture. Very simple. The visitors' berths are along the quay inside the breakwater, immediately to starboard of the entry. Most people come in stern to; as you can see (if you have cannily recognised Roaring Girl on the end of the line of yachts), we prefer to be bows to. We have yet to sort out our stern anchoring techniques or indeed how to get off our crowded transom and on to the land.
The Capitainerie for the marina is at the inner end of the visitors' pontoon, open long hours in the summer. English is a bit limited, and Sarah ended up translating for an incoming yachtsman who rang ahead only to find his French wasn't up to the task. Will this mean a discount on our berth? We very much doubt it!
The hardest part of berthing here is that they use chains for the lines that keep you off the quay. These are extremely heavy. When we arrived it took us a big struggle to get the right chain and get it on. And today (Thursday), there is a mistral forecast for tomorrow, so we decided to move along the three empty berths to port. Rather than drive out and in again we moved ourselves, step by argumentative step. In the process we hauled up about four chains and nearly killed ourselves. At one point the nice monsieur on the next boat came on board and hauled chain for us. No point in completely unnecessary lesbian pride in 30 degrees. Did we mention that these chains are really, really heavy?
Anyway, we are now settled, properly off the quay, in control of all our lines and able to amend them if the mistral gives us a hard tim