Tuesday — Calanques by Sail, then Home

Check out 9:15 AM → walk the north quay → sail 10 AM–5 PM → bags → taxi 5:30 PM → MRS T1 → London

⚠️ Three things tonight — before the front desk closes

Print the GetYourGuide ticket. All 4 pages. The voucher says it plainly: “Print this ticket and present it to an activity provider. Mobile tickets won’t be accepted.” Reception will do it. This is the highest-risk item on the whole day and it costs two minutes now.
Pack tonight, completely. The boat leaves at 10:00 AM and checkout is 11:00 AM — you cannot be in both places. You check out before you sail and the bags go into storage.
Two calls. Ring Au Gré du Vent and say you have an 8:25 PM flight — they run this trip all summer and will tell you straight whether 5:00 PM is a real 5:00 PM. Then pre-book a taxi to the hotel for 5:30 PM.

While you’re at the desk: ask them to stage the three bags by the door for 5:15 PM, and ask whether you can use a bathroom to rinse off after checkout. Both are free and both save you ten minutes when it’s tight.

✅ The weather has already said yes Tuesday is clear, 68–88°F, wind from the southeast at about 3 mph, no rain. No mistral — which is the one thing that cancels Calanques sailings outright. Your trip is going. Light air just means more engine and less heel: a flatter, easier ride.

8:00 AM · eat properly

Breakfast — the ticket asks for it

Hotel or a boulangerie on Quai des Belges

The voucher literally recommends eating before the cruise. Lunch aboard lands somewhere in the middle of seven hours, and there is nowhere to top up in between. Eat more than you want to.

9:15 AM · the thing that’s easy to get wrong

Check out — early, not at 11

Maisons du Monde Hôtel & Suites, 43 Quai des Belges Bags into storage

Settle the bill, hand over the three bags, confirm they’ll be staged by the door for 5:15 PM. You want the pickup at the end of the day to take sixty seconds, not ten minutes of someone hunting through a luggage room while a taxi meter runs.

Keep out of the bags: sunscreen, hats, water, towels, swimwear, the printed tickets, passports.

Hotel on the map

9:40 AM · 8 minutes on foot

Walk to pier #2 — you are not crossing the water

Devant la Mairie, Quai du Port, 13002 ~650 yards / 8 min

It looks like the far side of the harbour, but the Vieux-Port is a U and you’re at the closed end of it. Turn right at the head of the port and walk west along Quai du Port — the north quay — past the fish market to the Hôtel de Ville. Flat the whole way.

The Ferry Boat shown on your voucher’s map runs Place aux Huiles to Hôtel de Ville, south to north. It does you no good from where you are. Don’t wait for it.

Walking directions Meeting point

9:55 AM · board

Le Don du Vent, pier #2

Booking GYGVN254GXYN 3 adults Arrive 5 min early

Hand over the printed tickets. The vessel is a 32-metre, two-masted schooner built in 1947 — a designated heritage boat, a Calanques National Park partner, with its own chef cooking local produce aboard and wind as its primary propulsion. The engine is for manoeuvring in port.

In other words: not a booze-cruise catamaran. Worth knowing what you’re standing on.

Call Au Gré du Vent ledonduvent.com

10:00 AM – 5:00 PM · the reason you came

Seven hours in the Calanques

Sailing, swimming, buffet & wine included

You’ll run southeast along the limestone — Sormiou, Morgiou, Sugiton, En-Vau if the day allows — with swim stops in water that is genuinely the colour it is in photographs.

Yesterday pays off You sail more or less over Cap Morgiou, and 37 metres beneath you is the real entrance to the Cosquer cave you walked through on Monday. Handprints and horses painted when the sea was 130 m lower, sealed by the Mediterranean for 20,000 years. Point it out to Fleetwood when you pass it.

5:00 PM · the clock restarts

Dock, and move with purpose

Same pier, Quai du PortTarget: off by 5:15 PM

Disembarking a 32-metre boat with a full passenger list is not instant. Be near the gangway, not at the back of the queue — you have a flight and nobody else on board does.

5:15 PM off the pier → 5:25 PM back at the hotel, bags collected, salt rinsed → 5:30 PM in the taxi.

Walk back

5:30 PM · pre-booked, not hailed

Taxi to Marseille Provence — Terminal 1

25–40 min via the A55 ~€55–75 metered · ~€45–60 pre-booked flat

Take the taxi. The Navette 91 shuttle is €30 for the three of you plus a metro leg plus a walk through Saint-Charles with luggage. You’d save about €25 and spend 25 more minutes — salted, sunburnt, on the one evening of this trip with a hard cutoff. Wrong day to be clever.

Get the driver’s mobile number when you book. If the boat runs late, that turns a crisis into a phone call instead of a scramble for a cab on Quai des Belges at rush hour.

Route to MRS

6:05–6:20 PM · arrive

MRS Terminal 1 — bag drop, then breathe

BA351 · ref ZSHPPS · 3 checked bags included

Drop bags first, everything else after. You’ll have over an hour of slack against the working cutoff, which is exactly the margin you wanted when you booked a boat on a flight day.

Eat airside. The buffet will have worn off by seven, the flight is short, and dinner at the Heathrow hotel won’t happen until ~10:30 PM London time.

MRS Terminal 1

8:25 PM · wheels up

BA351 → London Heathrow, Terminal 3

Lands 9:20 PM London time~1 hr flying, −1 hr clock

Then Holiday Inn London Heathrow – Bath Road, 276 Bath Rd, West Drayton UB7 0DQ. Restaurant on site for the late arrival — that was the whole point of booking a buffer night rather than connecting.

Heathrow hotel

The two numbers

Work to 7:25 PM, not 7:40 PM British Airways’ standard short-haul bag drop closes 45 minutes before departure (7:40 PM). But Marseille-specific listings put the BA desk close at 60 minutes (7:25 PM). Plan to the conservative number; keep 7:40 PM as an emergency margin, not as the plan.

Abort trigger: not tied up by 6:15 PM If you are still on the water at 6:15 PM, stop being polite about it. Phone the driver forward to meet you closer, send one person ahead for the bags, and skip the rinse. Below that line you stop spending slack and start spending the cutoff.

Everything on one card

Boat booking	GYGVN254GXYN · GetYourGuide · booked by Jennifer · 3 adults
Operator	Au Gré du Vent · +33 7 66 10 41 41
Vessel & pier	Le Don du Vent, pier #2, Quai du Port, in front of the Mairie
Boat times	10:00 AM – 5:00 PM (7 hours) · arrive 9:55 AM · printed ticket only
Hotel checkout	Before you board — 9:15 AM. Nominal checkout 11:00 AM · ref 7Q3BW8
Flight	BA351 · MRS T1 8:25 PM → LHR T3 9:20 PM · ref ZSHPPS
Bag drop closes	7:25 PM working · 7:40 PM absolute
Tonight’s bed	Holiday Inn London Heathrow – Bath Road · ref 20573355
Tomorrow	Check out by 12:00 PM · AS 101 LHR T3 5:00 PM → SEA 6:45 PM · no terminal change

Pack for the boat, not the plane

Sunscreen you will actually reapply. Seven hours of open deck at 88°F with sun bouncing off water and white limestone. Reapply after every swim, not once at 10 AM.
Hats and sunglasses. There is limited shade on a sailing boat and the boom moves.
More water than you think. The wine is included — alternate it, or you board a flight dehydrated on top of burnt.
Towels you don’t mind stuffing wet into a bag at 5:25 PM. Hotel towels stay at the hotel.
Dry clothes at the TOP of the bag, not the bottom — you’ll be repacking on a pavement.
A little cash for the crew, and soft-soled shoes or bare feet. No black-soled trainers on a wooden deck.

Where this lands

The day is well-built — it just has one seam

A 10 AM departure against an 11 AM checkout is the only genuine conflict, and it disappears entirely if you pack tonight and check out at 9:15 AM. Everything after that has real slack: over an hour at the airport even on the conservative cutoff.

The printed ticket is the actual risk. Not traffic, not the boat, not the flight — a piece of paper you can’t produce at a pier at 9:55 AM. Handle it tonight and the rest of the day is just a nice sail.

Weather is clear and mistral-free, so there’s no cancellation to plan around. Go and enjoy it — and put the phone down between Sormiou and Sugiton.