For one week every fall, Saint-Tropez's harbor fills with boats old enough to have their own biographies.
The event traces back to an argument. In the autumn of 1981, two skippers, racing yachts named Ikra and Pride, got into a dispute over whose boat was faster and settled it the only way sailors would, with a race the next morning out to the Nioulargue buoy. What started as the "Club 55 Cup" between two boats grew the following year into an event that took the name Nioulargue and kept expanding through the 1980s and early 1990s, drawing bigger and older boats each season as word spread. A tragic collision in 1995, which sank a boat and cost a crew member's life, suspended the event pending legal proceedings, a somber chapter that's still part of the regatta's history even if it's rarely dwelt on today. In 1999, the Société Nautique de Saint-Tropez, one of France's oldest yacht clubs, took over the organization entirely and relaunched it under its current name, Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, with a renewed focus on safety alongside the spectacle.
Today it brings together more than 250 classic and modern yachts and roughly 3,500 sailors for a week of racing in the gulf, this year running September 26 through October 4. The Class J yachts, giants of early-1900s racing, make a return that alone is worth the trip to the waterfront, hundred-year-old hulls still moving under sail against boats built decades later with entirely different technology, wood and brass alongside carbon fiber, close enough to compare side by side. Onshore, the Village des Voiles is open to the public, with exhibits and a chance to get close to the boats between races. Stephanie went last year with a long lens and came back with more photos of hulls and rigging than she'll ever admit to owning.
You don't need a boat, or even a ticket, to watch. The main quay along the harbor gives a genuinely good view of the fleet coming and going, and up in La Ponche, the old fishing quarter on higher ground, you get a wider view over the whole gulf, quieter too, away from the crowds along the port itself. The Village des Voiles is free to walk through. Go in the morning for the start of the day's races, when the fleet is still gathering and the harbor has a kind of nervous energy to it, or evening for the boats coming back in against the light, sails catching the last color of the day. It's a busy week for the town regardless of the sailing, restaurants full, hotels booked well in advance, so anyone planning to stay over should book ahead rather than assume a room will turn up.
For a closer look, spectator boat trips run out of the port for the week, following the fleet out to the start line and staying close through the morning's races before the captain and crew, who tend to know this event inside out, fill in the history and gossip on the boats and crews you're watching. Build a day around it if you can: the day before racing starts, the big classic yachts run practice starts in the bay, worth watching from the quay if you're in town early, and the closing party at the end of the week is one of the better nights to just be in Saint-Tropez, regatta or not.
It's the one week a year Saint-Tropez's harbor looks the way it must have a century ago, and arguably the one week the town feels most like itself, less about who's on which yacht and more about the boats themselves, which is really what the whole thing was always meant to be about.