BOAT-COMPARATOR Guide

Boat rental in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Èze and Cap-d’Ail: the Riviera between Nice and Monaco

Departure ports (Beaulieu Plaisance, Silva Maris in Èze, Cap-d’Ail), day routes to Villefranche or Monaco, easterly swell, budget: the local guide.

Between the deep bay of Villefranche and the Rock of Monaco, five miles of steep coastline hold three towns that boat renters tend to skip in favour of their famous neighbours: Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Èze and Cap-d’Ail. Yet this is one of the most convenient stretches of water on the Riviera — three departure ports, two legendary capes on either side, and the option of swinging within an hour toward Nice to the west or Monaco to the east, depending on the day’s mood. For anyone searching for a Beaulieu RIB charter, this is exactly the water it was made for.

The cruising ground: five miles between two capes

Read the shoreline from west to east: the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula, closing off the bay of Villefranche; the Baie des Fourmis, Beaulieu’s cove backed by the cliffs of the Petite Afrique; Èze-bord-de-mer, Èze’s seaside quarter squeezed between water and corniche road; then Cap Mala and its famous beach at Cap-d’Ail, the last French anchorage before Monegasque waters. The whole coast drops quickly into deep water: you cruise at the foot of a wall of mountains, with the Grande Corniche as a balcony — one of the few places in the Mediterranean where you can pick out three tiers of corniche roads from your boat.

Where to start from: three ports, three sizes

The area’s main harbour is Port de Beaulieu Plaisance, run like its neighbours by Ports d’Azur (Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis): roughly 720 pontoon berths, shops, rental operators on site and easy access — the logical base for a day charter. Beaulieu also has a second, quieter basin, the small Port des Fourmis, at the foot of the bay of the same name. Beware of a common mix-up: the name Silva Maris does not refer to Beaulieu’s harbour but to the tiny port of Èze, a shelter of around sixty moorings built in 1961 below a residence at Èze-bord-de-mer and managed by Ports d’Azur since 2020 — charming, but too small and too shallow (about 2 m of water) to serve as a meaningful charter base. Finally, the port of Cap-d’Ail, around 260 deep-water berths hard against the Monegasque border, takes large yachts and often serves as a fallback or departure port for Monaco-focused programmes, covered in our guide to yacht rental in Monaco.

Which boat to rent here

The RIB is the undisputed king of this stretch: fast enough to string together the bay of Villefranche and Monaco in a single day, seaworthy when the easterly swell picks up, easy to nose up to a beach. Open motorboats and day cruisers make up most of the rest of the fleet. On the licence-free question, stay cautious: France’s 6 hp maximum rule applies here as everywhere, but the local licence-free offer is thin on this quickly-deepening coast — most boats listed in Beaulieu and Cap-d’Ail require a French coastal licence or an equivalent foreign one, and the larger licence-free fleets sit around Nice and Villefranche instead. Always check the exact wording on the listing rather than assuming a small boat is exempt.

Westward route: Baie des Fourmis, Cap Ferrat and the bay of Villefranche

Out of Beaulieu, the classic day heads west: a morning swim in the Baie des Fourmis, then a lap of the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula — villas above the waterline, the Cap Ferrat lighthouse, the Fossettes and Scaletta coves on the east side. Past the cape you enter the bay of Villefranche, one of the deepest natural harbours in the Mediterranean, whose anchorages and rules are covered in our guide to Villefranche-sur-Mer, its bay and Cap Ferrat. Push a little further and the Baie des Anges and Nice’s seafront are less than an hour away — the full route is described in our Nice-Villefranche by boat guide, and boats can be compared directly on the Villefranche-sur-Mer boat rental page.

Eastward route: Mala, Monaco and Cap Martin

Heading east, the first near-mandatory stop is Mala beach, Cap-d’Ail’s emblematic cove, hemmed in below the cliffs and reached mainly by sea or by a long staircase — hence its dense boat traffic in summer: arrive early, anchor on sand and respect the 300-metre band. Just beyond, you run along the Fontvieille towers and the Rock: Monegasque waters are tightly regulated and anchoring there is very restricted, so a visit takes planning — a berth in port or a simple pass offshore, both options covered in our guide to Monaco by boat for a day. Ambitious crews carry on toward Cap Martin and Menton, or even the Italian Riviera, a programme covered in our Menton and Italy by boat guide.

Anchoring: the Posidonia reflex

All along this coast, the dark patches on the seabed are most often Posidonia seagrass meadows, protected under French law: anchor on clear sand, never in the meadow. The research is unambiguous on this point: a Mediterranean study documented how anchors tear out shoots and degrade the matte to the point of carving lasting gaps into the meadows (Abadie, Lejeune, Pergent & Gobert, From mechanical to chemical impact of anchoring in seagrasses: the premises of anthropogenic patch generation in Posidonia oceanica meadows, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2016, see the study on Google Scholar), and a monitoring programme in the neighbouring Ligurian Sea measured a meadow’s decline directly attributable to recreational boat anchoring (Montefalcone et al., BACI design reveals the decline of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica induced by anchoring, Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2008, see the study on Google Scholar). The French rules and good habits are summed up in our guide to anchoring and Posidonia in the Mediterranean.

Wind, easterly swell and season

This coast faces south-east: in an easterly wind (the levant), swell rolls straight into the Baie des Fourmis and makes Mala beach uncomfortable, sometimes untenable — on easterly days, better to swing west of Cap Ferrat, where the bay of Villefranche offers remarkable shelter. In westerly weather or an ordinary afternoon thermal breeze, the water generally stays manageable, with the Riviera’s usual afternoon chop. The rental season most often runs from April to October, with a sharp July-August peak when booking a few days ahead becomes essential.

Budget and booking

Expect most often €200-600/day for a RIB depending on size and engine, roughly €300-900/day for a motorboat or day cruiser, and upward of €1,500-2,000/day for a crewed cabin yacht — fuel, usually billed on top, adds up quickly on a fast-paced Beaulieu-Monaco-Villefranche programme. With the fleet spread between Beaulieu, Villefranche, Nice and Monaco, comparing pays off: Boat-Comparator queries Boataround, SamBoat and Click&Boat live, so a single search shows whether the day’s cheapest boat leaves from Beaulieu itself or from a neighbouring port ten minutes up the road.

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Also worth reading

• How much does it cost to rent a boat in 2026? Real prices
• License-Free Boat Rental in France: Rules, Prices & Where to Book
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