The last obstacle is not the road
On a marina transfer the motorway is never the difficulty. The difficulty starts at the port entrance, where public road ends and a security regime, a barrier, a gatehouse or a seasonal municipal order begins. That is where the fifteen minutes go that cost you a crew window.
So a chauffeur who works this segment does not prepare a route, he prepares a meeting point: which gate, which name to give at the post, and until what time the lane is still open. That is settled when you book, not when you arrive.
Antibes: the gate is arranged in advance
At Port Vauban, quai Camille Rayon is described by its operator as private access under the ISPS code. In plain terms, you do not pass the gate without prior clearance, and the drop-off is handled at the control post.
The fallback is known and named: the Vauban car park on avenue de Verdun, around a thousand open-air spaces with no height limit. It is the nearest meeting point with no gauge constraint. Next door, the Pré-des-Pêcheurs car park is capped at 1.90 metres, so a tall van stays on the surface.
Saint-Tropez wrote its own drop-off rules
Few towns address paid passenger transport vehicles by name. Saint-Tropez does. For the season running from 23 May to 30 August 2026 it restricts traffic on boulevard Vasserot on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 4 pm to 8 pm, and on the traverse de la Gendarmerie on the same days from 7 pm to 3 am.
In exchange it opens seven short-stop bays on avenue Foch by place Carnot, from 8 pm to 3 am. Seven is not many, and it means that a guest dropped anywhere else will walk. An evening drop-off on the peninsula is therefore planned to the hour.
One factor sits outside anyone’s control: the La Foux junction, where the RD98 meets the RD559, is the bottleneck of the gulf. That junction, not the mileage, is what separates June from August.
Crew rotations and guest days
Two different needs coexist during a port call, and they are not booked the same way. A crew movement is short, repetitive and often very early or very late: it is handled as successive fixed fare transfers. A guest day is unpredictable: it is handled as hourly hire, where the car stays with you and the plan can change.
Either way, the Cannes Yachting Festival window, from 8 to 13 September 2026, saturates access to the old port and the Croisette sector. On those dates, booking ahead is not a nicety, it is the only way to have a car at all.
What we do not do
We do not handle provisioning itself. We carry people, and their luggage, not freight or technical parts. A bulky order belongs with a carrier, not with a chauffeur service.
We also do not promise access to a quay we do not control. Where clearance depends on the harbour office or on the vessel, we say so before you book, and we agree a public fallback meeting point.