If you want to understand how the Mediterranean superyacht industry actually works, you go to Antibes. Not Monaco, with its billionaires and its Grand Prix, and not Cannes, with its red carpet. You go to a small walled town on the French Riviera, wedged between Nice and Cannes, where the largest marina in the Mediterranean sits behind sixteenth century ramparts and where thousands of yacht crew arrive every spring looking for work. Antibes yachting is not a marketing phrase. It is a genuine ecosystem: the boats, the crew, the agencies, the provisioners, the shipyards, the sailmakers, the bars where a captain hires a deckhand on a handshake, and the crew houses where a green stewardess sleeps in a bunk bed for thirty euros a night while she hunts for her first contract.
This guide is written for two kinds of people. The first is crew: the deckhands, stewardesses, chefs, engineers, and captains who make the Riviera season happen and who need to know where to live, where to walk the docks, which bars matter, and how to actually get hired. The second is anyone on the ownership side: an owner weighing whether to put a yacht into charter, a management company sourcing local trades, or a business that services the fleet. Antibes serves both, and understanding why it holds that position tells you a great deal about the wider Mediterranean season.
Geography did most of the work. Antibes sits almost exactly halfway between Nice Cote d'Azur airport, the second busiest airport in France, and the harbours of Cannes and Golfe-Juan. Drive twenty minutes east and you reach Nice and its terminal full of crew flying in from Cape Town, Auckland, Fort Lauderdale, and Southampton. Drive twenty minutes west and you reach Cannes. Monaco is forty minutes up the coast. That central position means a yacht based in Antibes can reposition for a Cannes regatta, a Monaco owner pickup, or a Saint-Tropez charter without a long delivery leg, and crew can get to an interview anywhere on the coast in under an hour.
Then there is Port Vauban itself. It is the biggest marina in the Mediterranean measured by the total tonnage of vessels it holds, and its layout is unusual. Most marinas are built for a range of boat sizes. Port Vauban was rebuilt to hold giants. The Quai des Milliardaires, the stretch that crew everywhere call the Billionaires' Quay, was designed for the largest private yachts afloat, and the newer Camille Rayon Quay under the International Yacht Club d'Antibes berths vessels up to 110 metres. When you stand on that quay in June you are looking at a concentration of capital that exists in very few places on earth. And every one of those hulls needs a full crew, a stack of contractors, a provisioner, an agent, and a maintenance schedule that runs all year.
Antibes also carries an English-speaking heritage that makes it unusually welcoming to the international crew workforce. The town has an old English quarter, English-speaking churches, English bookshops, and a long history of British and Antipodean crew settling in. For a nineteen year old from Durban or Perth arriving with two bags and a fresh STCW certificate, that matters. You can find your feet in Antibes in a way that is far harder in a French-only town.
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Create your free profilePort Vauban has around 1,600 berths in total, ranging from small local fishing and leisure boats near the old town to the mega-berths on the Quai des Milliardaires. The port sits directly beneath Fort Carre, the sixteenth century star fort that guards the headland, and beside the ramparts of the old town. This is not an industrial marina hidden behind a fence. It is woven into the fabric of Antibes, and you can walk from a cafe in the old town onto the quays in a few minutes.
The International Yacht Club d'Antibes, the IYCA, was redeveloped as part of a long modernisation of the port. The new club district added premium berthing on the Camille Rayon Quay, along with crew relaxation areas, security and CCTV across the superyacht zone, conference and meeting rooms, and crew team building facilities. For a captain, that means a base with the shore services a large program needs. For crew, it means the beating heart of the dockwalk sits right there: Quai Camille Rayon is where the largest boats berth and where crew hand over their CVs in the early morning.
Understanding the quays helps you understand the hierarchy of the port. The biggest, most famous private yachts sit on the Quai des Milliardaires. The professional charter and private fleet spreads across the rest of the superyacht berths. And around the edges you have the working port: fuel dock, chandlers, the boatyard, and the tenders buzzing between anchored yachts in the bay and the shore. Marine diesel at the Port Vauban fuel dock ran roughly 1.75 to 2.00 euros per litre through the 2025 to 2026 period, which gives you a sense of the running costs behind every mile these boats travel.
Antibes is a crew town. In a good season, thousands of yacht crew pass through, and a large share of them are looking for work at any given moment. The whole social and practical infrastructure of the place is built around that reality. If you arrive knowing how it works, you save weeks. If you arrive blind, you burn money in a crew house while the boats fill up around you.
Crew houses are shared accommodation aimed specifically at job-hunting yacht crew. They are cheap by Riviera standards, sociable, and, more importantly, they are information exchanges. The person in the next bunk heard about a daywork job this morning. The house manager knows which boat lost a stewardess last week. Staying in a crew house during the hunt is as much about the network as the bed.
Several houses cluster around Port Vauban and the old town. The Crew Grapevine sits just behind the Hop Store, about as central to both the harbour and the nightlife as you can get. The Glamorgan is a smaller house near the port with a communal lounge and kitchen sleeping up to six. Larger houses like The Crew House can sleep close to thirty, with laundry, Wi-Fi, shared kitchens, and a steady churn of crew coming and going. Prices in 2026 sit roughly at 25 to 35 euros a night for a dormitory bunk, 30 to 50 euros for a private room in a shared flat off-peak, and 60 to 90 euros a night for a private studio near the port.
You cannot separate the Antibes crew scene from a handful of bars, because a real amount of hiring happens in them. This is not a myth. Captains and heads of department drink where the crew drink, and a chief stew who needs a junior tomorrow will ask around tonight. The names have been constant for years. Le Blue Lady is the old-favourite crew pub, good for a quiet pint and a game of pool, a place where you actually talk to people. The Hop Store is the loud Irish pub a few steps from Port Vauban and the Quai des Milliardaires, packed on Six Nations weekends and most nights in season, where you will run into crew from every flag and every department. La Galere sits in the same orbit as a long-running crew hangout. These places are not glamorous. They are where the industry does its informal business.
The etiquette is simple but real. Be friendly, be sober enough to make a good impression, and treat every conversation as a possible interview, because it is. People remember the green deckhand who was polite and keen far more than the one who got loud and messy. Reputation in Antibes travels fast, and it travels both ways.
Dockwalking is the oldest way into yachting and it still works in Antibes. You print a stack of one-page CVs, you dress smart but practical, and you walk the quays early, handing your CV to whoever is on deck. The rules are worth learning before you start, because breaking them marks you as green in the wrong way.
Walk in the morning, roughly between 7 and 9am, when crew are on deck doing washdowns and the boat is awake. Quai Camille Rayon is the main stage because that is where the big boats sit. Do not walk at the weekend. Almost nobody hires or works normal hours on a Saturday or Sunday, and approaching a closed-up boat announces that you do not understand the industry. Keep your CV to a single page with a good, professional photo, because a long CV gets read less, not more. Be brief and polite on deck, ask if they are taking on daywork or looking for crew, leave your CV, and move on. Do not linger, do not climb aboard uninvited, and never step onto a passerelle without being asked.
Daywork is the reward for good dockwalking. A day of teak sanding, silver polishing, or washdowns pays a real wage and, far more valuable, gets you onto boats where people can see how you work. A huge share of first permanent jobs come from daywork that turned into a trial that turned into a contract. Antibes yachting runs on exactly this ladder, and dockwalking is the bottom rung.
One honest caveat: the docks are more secured than they used to be. The superyacht zone at Port Vauban has CCTV and controlled access, so you will not always get onto every quay freely. This is exactly why the parallel digital dockwalk matters now. A crew profile that captains can search means your CV reaches boats you could never physically reach, on days you are not on the quay. If you want the full playbook on turning up, walking the docks, and converting daywork into a berth, read our guide to how to get hired as yacht crew before your first morning on Quai Camille Rayon.
Walk the digital dock too
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Start your free profileAlongside the informal dockwalk, Antibes is home to most of the serious crew recruitment agencies in the Mediterranean. Names that crew register with include the long-established Riviera agencies and the international placement firms with offices in or near the town. The model is straightforward for jobseekers: you register for free, you build a profile, you interview, and the agency places you. The yacht or management company pays the placement fee, not you. If any agency asks a jobseeker for money to register or to be put forward for a job, walk away, because that is not how legitimate yacht crew recruitment works.
Agencies are strongest for permanent, well-defined roles on established programs, especially once you have a season or two behind you and a specific department. They are weaker for absolute beginners with no sea time, which is exactly the gap that dockwalking, daywork, and a good online profile fill. The smart approach is to run all three channels at once: register with two or three agencies, walk the docks in the mornings, and keep a live crew profile that captains can find directly. Relying on a single channel is the most common mistake green crew make.
Before you register anywhere, get your paperwork right. That means a valid ENG1 or equivalent medical, your STCW basic safety training, a clean and current CV, and, for interior crew, ideally some hospitality or food-and-beverage background. Our detailed yacht crew CV and dayworking guide walks through exactly how to format a one-page yachting CV that agencies and captains actually read, and how to line up daywork while you wait for a permanent berth.
Behind the glamour of the Quai des Milliardaires is a dense network of businesses that keep the fleet running, and Antibes has one of the deepest concentrations anywhere. This is the part of the ecosystem owners and management companies care about most, and it is a large part of why boats base themselves here.
Provisioning is a specialist trade on the Riviera. A charter yacht carrying twelve guests through a week in the islands might order tens of thousands of euros of food, wine, flowers, and specialty items, delivered dockside to a precise schedule, often with a chef's exacting demands attached. Antibes and the surrounding towns support dedicated yacht provisioners who source everything from morning croissants to rare vintages, and who understand the logistics of getting perishables onto a boat that sails at dawn. The nearby Marche Provencal in the old town, one of the best covered markets on the coast, feeds both the chefs and the town.
Then come the trades. Antibes and its neighbour Golfe-Juan support shipwrights, marine electricians, engineers, refrigeration and air-conditioning specialists, sailmakers and riggers, canvas and upholstery shops, teak specialists, detailers and exterior cleaning crews, varnishers, painters, and the interior deep-clean teams that turn a boat around between charters. La Ciotat, an hour or so west, handles the largest refits, but a great deal of routine and mid-size work happens right around Antibes. For crew, these businesses are also employers of daywork, and many crew move into the shore trades after their sea years.
For anyone on the ownership or management side sourcing this kind of work up the coast, it helps to have a single place to compare vetted local businesses. If you are running a program out of Monaco, you can find marine cleaning in Monaco and the surrounding trades directly, without working through a chain of middlemen. The same directory logic applies across the Riviera: the businesses list free, and owners and captains find them free.
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List your business freeThe Mediterranean yacht season has a clear shape, and life in Antibes moves with it. Knowing the calendar tells you when to arrive, when boats hire, and when the town empties.
Winter, roughly November to February, is quiet. Many crew leave for the Caribbean season or go home. Boats that stay put go into maintenance and refit mode, either alongside in Antibes or up the coast at La Ciotat. This is the time for long yard lists, warranty work, and the trades that make their living keeping the fleet ready.
Late winter into early spring, from about February to March, the town wakes up. Crew start arriving to look for berths before the season proper. This is the smart time to land if you are hunting for permanent work, because you get ahead of the crowd and boats are building their crews for the year. Arriving in June, when everyone is already crewed and the boats are out working, is a much harder way to find a first job.
Spring proper, April to May, is when the season kicks off. The French Riviera fills with events that drive yacht demand: the Monaco Grand Prix and the Cannes Film Festival both fall in May and both pull a wall of large yachts to the coast, paying premium rates. Crew are in full demand, daywork is plentiful, and the boats are moving.
Summer, June to September, is peak. This is charter season, owner-use season, and the busiest stretch on the water. Antibes itself gets hot and crowded, the boats are out working the coast and the islands, and crew who found berths in spring are earning. Autumn, roughly late September into October, brings the Monaco Yacht Show, the industry's biggest annual gathering, and then a gradual wind-down as boats head for winter berths or cross the Atlantic.
| Period | What happens in Antibes | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| November to February | Quiet, refit and maintenance, many crew away | Yard work, trades, shoulder-season deals |
| February to March | Crew arrive to job-hunt, boats build crews | Landing a permanent berth before the rush |
| April to May | Season opens, Grand Prix and Cannes drive demand | Daywork, first jobs, premium event work |
| June to September | Peak charter and owner season, boats working | Earning, saving, building sea time |
| Late September to October | Monaco Yacht Show, then wind-down | Networking, lining up the next contract |
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Create your free profileAntibes is not cheap, but the economics of yachting change the maths. When you land a permanent berth, your accommodation, food, and utilities are usually covered on board, and your travel during the season is often paid too. That means a large share of your salary can go straight into savings. The expensive period is the job hunt, when you are paying for a crew-house bunk and your own food with no income coming in. Budget for that gap.
General living costs in Antibes run roughly 9 percent above the French national average, and a one-bedroom apartment in town runs about 1,000 to 1,500 dollars a month if you rent long-term rather than staying in crew housing. Most crew do not rent an apartment while job-hunting; they use crew houses precisely because they are cheaper and better connected. The table below gives realistic 2026 numbers for a crew member arriving to look for work.
| Expense | Typical 2026 cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Crew-house dorm bunk | 25 to 35 euros per night | Cheapest option, best for networking |
| Private room in shared flat | 30 to 50 euros per night (off-peak) | More privacy, less social intel |
| Private studio near port | 60 to 90 euros per night | For couples or longer stays |
| One-bed apartment (long let) | 1,000 to 1,500 dollars per month | Rarely worth it while job-hunting |
| Coffee / casual lunch | 3 to 18 euros | Old-town cafes cost more |
| STCW basic safety course | 1,000 to 1,300 euros | Do it before you arrive if you can |
| ENG1 medical | 90 to 150 euros | Required before most contracts |
A sensible plan is to arrive with enough money to cover four to six weeks of crew-house living plus your certificates, and to treat every day as a working day: dockwalk in the mornings, follow up on leads through the afternoon, and keep your profile and CV current. Crew who arrive with a thin budget and no plan tend to run out of money right before the work appears.
The reason people put up with the expensive job hunt is the earning power once they are on a boat. The Mediterranean, and the French Riviera in particular, pays at the top end of the global crew market. Entry-level crew, green deckhands and junior stewardesses, generally start around 2,000 to 3,500 euros a month, with the Med often running 10 to 15 percent above global averages and the Riviera commanding a premium around the Grand Prix and film festival. On charter boats, crew typically earn more than their private counterparts once tips are counted, often another 15 to 25 percent. Senior roles climb fast: on large superyachts, salaries for heads of department and senior officers run into many thousands of euros a month, and captains of the biggest boats earn six figures a year.
Because your living costs are covered on board, the savings rate can be remarkable. A junior crew member who is disciplined can save the bulk of a season's wage, which is why so many people give yachting a few years to build a deposit or clear debt. For a full breakdown by position, from deckhand to chief engineer to captain, see our superyacht crew salary guide for 2026, which lays out realistic ranges by boat size and department.
| Role | Typical monthly range (2026) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Junior deckhand | 2,500 to 3,500 euros | Entry level, plus tips on charter |
| Junior stewardess | 2,800 to 3,600 euros | Hospitality background helps |
| Bosun / lead deck | 3,500 to 5,000 euros | A season or two of experience |
| Chief stew | 4,500 to 7,000 euros | Runs the interior team |
| Chef | 5,000 to 9,000 euros | Highly variable by skill and boat |
| Engineer | 4,000 to 9,000 euros | Rises sharply with tickets |
| Captain (large yacht) | 10,000 to 20,000+ euros | Six figures a year on the biggest boats |
Turn a season into savings
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Create your free profileAntibes is not only a crew town. It is a base for the ownership economy that surrounds these boats, and that side matters just as much to how the port works. Owners keep yachts here because the shore services, the airport access, and the berthing options are among the best on the coast. Management companies run programs from here, handling accounting, ISM and safety compliance, crew payroll, refit planning, and the day-to-day operation of a vessel on the owner's behalf.
Chartering is a big part of the calculation. An owner who uses a yacht only a few weeks a year can offset the substantial running costs, crew salaries, fuel, dockage, insurance, and maintenance, by placing the boat into charter for part of the season. That is a real business decision with real tradeoffs: charter income against wear, guest turnover against privacy, and higher crew demands against the tips that keep good crew loyal. It is not a decision to make lightly, and it usually runs through a professional management company that handles the marketing, the contracts, the guest logistics, and the compliance that charter work requires.
To be clear about our own role here: Yacht Service Network is not a charter-booking site. What it does on this side is connect owners and management companies with the vetted local crew and marine services a charter operation needs, and help owners weighing charter management find the right operators. If you are looking at the numbers on putting a yacht into charter up the coast, you can start by comparing charter management in Monaco, then source the cleaning, provisioning, and refit trades from the same directory. The point is to put owners, captains, crew, and shore businesses in one place, free on both sides, rather than through a chain of commissions.
For crew, the charter side is where a lot of the money is. Charter boats run harder and demand more, but they pay more and the tips are real. Crew who want charter-season work should say so plainly on their profile, because captains crewing up a busy charter program are specifically looking for people who can handle guest turnarounds, long hours, and high service standards without complaint.
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Create your free profileA few honest habits separate the crew who get hired quickly from the ones who drift. First, arrive early in the season, ideally February or March, with your certificates already done and money in the bank. Second, run every channel at once: agencies, dockwalking, the bars, and a live online profile. Third, take daywork seriously, because it is your audition, and treat every boat you work on as a reference you are building. Fourth, be someone people want on their boat: reliable, clean, cheerful, and easy to live with in a small space, because attitude gets you rehired far more than a long CV does.
Keep your digital presence current alongside the physical hunt. The dockwalk still works, but the securing of the quays and the sheer number of boats mean no one can physically reach every deck. A searchable profile that captains and management companies can find puts your CV in front of boats you would never walk past. You can carry that profile with you on the YSN app, keep your availability updated from your phone between dockwalks, and respond to captains the moment they message. The Yacht Service Network app keeps the whole thing in your pocket while you are walking the quays at seven in the morning.
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Create your free profileIt would be a mistake to think of Antibes only as a workplace. It is a genuinely pleasant town to live in, which is part of why crew keep coming back and why many settle here after their sea years. The old town inside the ramparts is a maze of narrow streets, the covered Marche Provencal, small restaurants, and the Picasso Museum in the Chateau Grimaldi, where the artist worked in 1946. Just around the headland is Juan-les-Pins, the resort half of the commune, with a long sandy beach, a summer jazz festival with real history behind it, and a nightlife that runs late in season.
Cap d'Antibes, the wooded peninsula between the two, holds some of the most expensive real estate in France and the famous Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, and the coastal path around it is one of the best walks on the Riviera. For crew on a day off, you have swimming, hiking, the market, and quick trains along the coast to Nice, Cannes, and Monaco. It is an easy place to be young and broke and an easy place to come back to when you are older and settled. That dual character, hard-working yacht port and liveable Mediterranean town, is a big part of why Antibes yachting has held its place for so long and shows no sign of losing it.
Antibes holds the largest marina in the Mediterranean at Port Vauban, including the Quai des Milliardaires and the IYCA's Camille Rayon Quay for the biggest yachts. It sits centrally between Nice airport, Cannes, and Monaco, and it has deep crew, agency, and marine-service networks plus an English-speaking heritage. That combination of berthing, location, and support makes it the practical center of the Med yachting industry.
Arrive early in the season with your STCW basic safety training and an ENG1 medical done, then run several channels at once. Register with reputable crew agencies for free, dockwalk the quays in the mornings with a one-page CV, and build a searchable online crew profile. Take daywork whenever you can, because it is how green crew prove themselves and get offered permanent berths.
Dockwalking means walking the marina quays and handing your printed CV to crew on deck. In Antibes it happens mainly on Quai Camille Rayon, roughly between 7 and 9am on weekdays, when boats are awake and doing washdowns. Keep your CV to one page with a good photo, be brief and polite, never step aboard uninvited, and do not walk on weekends when almost nobody is working or hiring.
A crew-house dorm bunk runs about 25 to 35 euros a night in 2026, a private room in a shared flat 30 to 50 euros off-peak, and a private studio near the port 60 to 90 euros a night. Add food, certificates, and daily costs, and you should arrive with enough to cover four to six weeks of hunting. Once you land a berth, the boat usually covers accommodation and food, so your savings rate jumps.
Le Blue Lady is the classic crew pub, good for a quiet pint and a game of pool and easy conversation. The Hop Store is the loud Irish pub steps from Port Vauban, packed in season and on Six Nations weekends. La Galere is another long-running crew hangout. These bars matter because a real amount of informal hiring happens through the people you meet in them, so treat every conversation as a possible interview.
Entry-level deckhands and junior stewardesses generally start around 2,000 to 3,500 euros a month, with the Med paying roughly 10 to 15 percent above global averages and premiums around the Grand Prix and Cannes. Charter crew earn more once tips are counted. Senior roles climb quickly, with chefs, engineers, and chief stews in the thousands and captains of large yachts reaching six figures a year, and because living costs are covered on board, crew save a large share of it.
The main season runs from April to October, peaking through June to September. Boats crew up in February and March, so that is the best time to arrive and job-hunt. May brings the Monaco Grand Prix and Cannes Film Festival, which drive premium demand, and late September brings the Monaco Yacht Show. Winter is quiet, with many boats in refit and much of the crew away on the Caribbean season.
Both work, and many programs use both. Antibes offers the deepest concentration of shore services, crew, and berthing at Port Vauban plus easy airport access, while Monaco offers prestige and event proximity at a higher berthing cost. Management companies often base operations near Antibes for the services and source specialist trades and charter management along the coast, including in Monaco, depending on the owner's plans for charter and events.