the harbour next door
Looking for a private boat rental in Nice? Here is the local secret: the best day on the water out of Nice doesn’t start in Nice. We run full-day private charters from Beaulieu-sur-Mer — fifteen minutes from the Promenade, one bay east — where the harbour is calm, parking is human, and the first swim is five minutes from the quay, not forty.
Timings are from her berth at Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Staying closer? We bring her to you — and it is simply a boat day in Nice instead.
The Port of Nice is handsome, busy and commercial — ferries to Corsica, tour boats on circuits, a one-way system that eats half your morning. Beaulieu-sur-Mer, one headland east, is a small pleasure harbour with palms over the quay and Cap Ferrat directly opposite the entrance. Charters that leave from Nice spend their first hour motoring to the water we start in.
Getting to us is easier than parking in Nice: the train from Nice-Ville stops at Beaulieu-sur-Mer five minutes’ walk from the boat, taxis know the port, and from the airport it is half an hour along the coast road. Staying in Nice itself? Leave after breakfast, be swimming by half past ten.
The boat is a fourteen-metre SACS Rebel 47 — Italian, fast, dark-hulled, red-hearted — and it is yours for the day, up to ten guests, never shared. West takes you along the Promenade des Anglais for the classic Nice-from-the-sea photograph, then on towards Antibes and the Lérins islands. East is the connoisseur’s run: Villefranche bay, the villas of Cap Ferrat, Monaco for lunch at the yacht-club end of the harbour.
Most days hold two or three long swims in coves the tour boats can’t reach, a table booked ashore or lunch at anchor, and the golden run home when the light goes amber. The day page walks the hours; the short version is that the itinerary is a conversation, not a card.
A day at Nice?
We reply within the day
Plenty of Nice boat rental outfits will hand you the keys to a six-metre runabout. It is fine, for what it is. But this coast rewards local hands: the mistral has moods, the good anchorages hide, the restaurant pontoons answer the captain they know. A skippered charter means fifty knots of boat handled by someone who reads this water daily — and your whole party actually on holiday, including whoever would otherwise be driving.
Rates are public — €3,200 the full day for the whole boat, not per person — and the prices page explains every number, including fuel, before you ask.
a few suggestions
These are suggestions, nothing more — places we actually take guests, each with the captain’s own note. Tell us which ones tempt you and the day is built around them, name somewhere that is not on the list and we go there instead — or leave the whole thing with us.
Beach clubs
arrive by sea
At the old town end of the Baie des Anges, tucked under the castle hill — the pick of the Promenade’s private beaches.
The one Nice beach club worth the sunbed money. From the water it marks where the good end of the bay begins.
Restaurants
Built on a rock in the sea off the Cap de Nice, on the stump of an old diving platform — the most theatrically sited table in the city.
Book weeks ahead for dinner; the view from the water on the way past is free and nearly as good.
Restaurants
The Niçoise institution behind the old town — the original of a name that has since travelled to London and Dubai.
Lunch here, then the fifteen-minute train to us, and you have done Nice properly in one day.
Sights & museums
arrive by sea
The seven-kilometre seafront the English wintering set built — Nice’s whole self-image in one curve.
The classic photograph is from the water, not the pavement: we run the bay slowly on westward days.
Sights & museums
The old town’s flower and produce market — socca, olives, and the best hour in Nice before nine.
If you are staying in Nice, do the market at dawn, then take the fifteen-minute train to us and be swimming by half ten.
Hotels
The pink dome on the Promenade since 1913 — part hotel, part museum, entirely itself.
Staying here? The charter day starts with a fifteen-minute taxi east and ends with you understanding why we berth in Beaulieu.
whatever you have in mind, that is the day we build
from the log
Yes — if you are staying in Nice, we can meet you there and it is simply a Nice boat day. Plenty of guests still prefer Beaulieu, fifteen minutes east by taxi or train: no port security, no walk down a commercial quay, and the good water starts at its sea wall. Either way, tell us when you book and we will arrange it.
€3,200 for the full day and €1,900 for a half day, for the whole boat and up to ten guests — with a complimentary welcome rosé on ice as you board. Fuel is additional, as everywhere on this coast, and quoted plainly for your route when you book. No per-person pricing, no sharing with strangers.
Comfortably: Villefranche bay, Cap Ferrat, Èze from the water, Monaco, and back with swims between — or west to Antibes and the Lérins islands off Cannes. The boat cruises fast enough that the coast between Menton and Cannes is all one day’s range. Saint-Tropez is the great run west — the captain picks the glassiest day of your stay for it.
Private, entirely. No tickets, no other parties, no circuit. You charter the boat and the day is built around you — which is the difference between a boat trip in Nice and a day you plan holidays around repeating.
One boat, one crew, up to 10 guests, and a coast that is entirely yours for the day. Tell us how you want to spend it and the rest is ours to arrange. The day is yours and it is our pleasure to be part of it.