We leave Barcelona in the late afternoon, once the city has finally gone quiet and the sea breeze has dropped. Three hours later the Maresme is just a line of lights behind us and the first cove opens to starboard. From there, we won’t see another apartment block for six days.
Why this coast
The Costa Brava isn’t an island, and that is exactly what makes it easy. You leave from Barcelona, you come back to Barcelona, and there is no compulsory crossing in the middle. The first anchorage is three hours away. If it blows up, we tuck in behind the next headland; we never end up with forty miles of open sea to swallow because the schedule said so.
And the rock changes. North of Blanes it turns red, drops straight into the water, and the pines come down to within three metres of the edge. This is neither Greece nor the Balearics: it is steeper, tighter, greener.
The week, day by day
Day 1 — Barcelona, then north
Boarding at Port Vell early afternoon, briefing, market shopping with the chef if one is sailing with you. We slip around four and work our way up the Maresme coast. First night at Blanes or in a cove just north of it, depending on the hour and the wind.
Day 2 — Tossa de Mar
A short leg. Tossa is the only walled village left on this coast, and from the sea it reads as a block of stone set on the water. We anchor below the ramparts, go ashore in the afternoon, and move out in the evening to a quieter cove to sleep — because Tossa bay, in August, fills up.
Day 3 — Palamós and Calella de Palafrugell
We pass Sant Feliu de Guíxols and head up to Palamós, still a working fishing port: the auction runs late afternoon and the red prawn from here fetches more than anywhere else in Catalonia. Evening anchorage off Calella de Palafrugell, white houses and arcades right at the waterline.
Day 4 — Tamariu, Aiguablava, Sa Tuna
The best day of the week, and the shortest in miles. Four coves in a row, each twenty minutes apart under engine: Llafranc, Tamariu, Aiguablava, Sa Tuna. Two in the morning, lunch at anchor, and you pick the third for the night. The water is clear over six or eight metres and the bottom is pale sand between the rocks.
Day 5 — The Medes Islands and the Gulf of Roses
We round Cap de Begur and cross Pals bay. The Medes are seven rocks off L’Estartit, a full marine reserve since 1983: the best diving on the coast, and from the deck you can watch the grouper without putting your head under. Night in the gulf, at L’Escala or at anchor.
Day 6 — Cadaqués and Cap de Creus
The Catalan end of the world. We round Cap de Creus, the easternmost point of the peninsula, where the rock turns frankly lunar — this is the landscape Dalí spent his life painting, and once you have seen it from the sea you realise he wasn’t inventing much.
Anchor off Cadaqués, a white village with no direct road from the motorway, and none the worse for it. Dinner ashore, and the tender back aboard.
Day 7 — Going back
Two ways home, and you choose. Either we work back down the coast over two easy days, stopping where we didn’t have time on the way up. Or we slip from Cadaqués at the end of the day and run home offshore in one go, overnight, with watches and breakfast in sight of Tibidabo.
Both make good weeks. We decide at the start, not at the end.
Monohull or catamaran
Both work here. The catamaran is comfortable at anchor, doesn’t heel and gives you an enormous saloon — the right call with a family. The monohull fits into narrower coves, which matters on a coast where the best ones are forty metres wide, and costs less in harbour.
When to come
May to October. July and August have the warmest water and the busiest coves; June and September are the good compromise. In May and October you get days like this one — a whole beach to nobody — but you have to accept that the tramontana can blow for three days straight on the northern half.
This itinerary is indicative. It gives you a sense of the rhythm and the distances: the real trip is built with you, from what you want to see and how much time you’re willing to spend at sea.
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