The price of a clean conscience: 19 Euro

43° 25′ 8.8328” N 6° 51′ 29.1552” E

15th of July

In search of the perfect azure sea. When the sea match skippers wife’s toenails, we are there

Barely have we anchored Ronja at a vacant anchor buoy in a beautiful, beautiful bay, Rade d’Agay, midway between St. Tropez and Cannes, before a dinghy comes rushing.
“It will be 19 Euro, please,” says the young guy in the boat.
“19 Euro? For what,” asks skippers wife. “What facilities do we get for the money?”

Well, answers the young guy; there’s shops ashore, toilets, and also showers ashore.

But we do not have any inflatable boat. We are not going ashore. We can not, since we are out here in the middle of the bay by a buoy.

First in the water: Skippers wife

“No problem. I’ll come and get you for 3 € per time” the port captain’s enterprising apprentice answers.

It is a wonderful bay. It was used as anchorage already when the Romans ruled the Mediterranean. And in August 1944, the Americans landed 20,000 soldiers in Agay Bay as part of the offensive to liberate France from the Germans. Today the bay is characterized by the beach and sailor life.

Later we read that it is the authorities who have established 123 mooring buoys around the bay to protect a particular species seagrass in the bay (in English called the Posidonia Grass). The grass is vital to maintain balance and animal life in the sea, and by establishing firmly anchored buoys, the authorities prevents that the sailing boats destroys with the sea floor with their anchors.

Oh well. So 19 € maybe is not that wrong.

As we get ready to depart the next morning, we hail a port guard who passes in his dinghy, waving a black garbage bag and asks if waste disposal is part of the port charges of 19 €.

The wind is in the south, straight into the bay, less than five meters per second

He points further into the bay, where we did indeed wonder about a shapeless thing, moored, almost an oversized teacup from a Disneyland-carousel. We sail there and discover: It is a floating garbage container.

Having deposited the last days of waste and with a clear conscience in relation to the important sea grass, we find that this is what you get for 19 € in the Agay Bay.

Facts: the 123 buoys are built in three different zones in the bay. Those who are more economical than us can anchors outside the zones with their own anchor. It costs nothing. But then there’s of cause the conscience thing.