The brokers all quote the 10 percent rule: budget 10 percent of the boat's value every year to keep her running. For a 120,000 euro cruising boat that is 12,000 a year, and the number is roughly right for a glamorous Riviera base. It is wildly wrong for a sensible Atlantic owner who does most of the work himself. I keep a 12-metre boat in France for closer to 6 percent of her value, and I am going to show you the lines that make up that figure so you can build your own honest budget instead of trusting a slogan.
I record every euro. These are the categories that actually appear on my bank statement, biggest first.
Berthing: the single largest line
Where you keep the boat dominates the whole budget. A 12-metre annual afloat berth runs from roughly 3,150 euros at Port Napoleon near Marseille up to about 9,879 euros at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Nice sits around 7,410 euros. A typical French Mediterranean annual berth for 12 metres averages near 5,159 euros, while on the Atlantic, places like Port Medoc list around 2,163 euros a year.
For a 10-metre boat across French ports, expect roughly 2,235 to 2,856 euros annually. Water and electricity usually meter on top.
The single biggest lever you have on your annual cost is the berth, and it is set the day you choose a region, not the day you sail. The waiting lists and how berths are allocated are a topic in themselves, covered in berthing your boat permanently in France. My view, unchanged after years of watching the bills: the difference between a Cap Ferrat berth and an Atlantic one is 7,000 euros a year of postcode, not seamanship.
Insurance
Yacht insurance in France broadly costs 0.5 to 2 percent of the insured value a year. On a 120,000 euro boat that is somewhere between 600 and 2,400 euros, with the rate driven by your cruising area, claims history and whether the boat is left afloat unattended over winter.
Read the winter conditions carefully. As I set out in the guide to leaving your boat afloat in France over winter, many policies impose lay-up inspection requirements, and a breached condition turns a cheap premium into worthless paper.
Winter storage and the haul-out
Whether you stay afloat or come ashore, winter is its own budget line. Hauling out adds the lift and relaunch (about 35 to 120 euros each), the storage, and the spring antifoul. On open-air hardstanding around 3.70 euros per square metre per month, a 12-metre boat's six-month winter runs near 1,000 euros for the standing alone, before handling and wash.
A full ashore winter for a 12-metre boat doing its own antifoul lands somewhere between 1,500 and 1,900 euros, repairs excluded. The detailed breakdown of yard pricing sits in wintering ashore in France, and it is the line where reading the tariff carefully saves the most money.
Maintenance: antifoul, anodes, servicing
This is the line that never sleeps. Most owners haul out yearly to renew antifoul, swap anodes and run a visual check, even if every second year would technically do. My recurring annual maintenance:
- antifoul paint and rollers, DIY: 250 to 400 euros
- anodes: 60 to 120 euros
- engine service (oil, filters, impeller), DIY: 150 to 250 euros, or double that at a yard charging around 60 euros an hour
- rigging, sails, electronics, sundry: a rolling 500 to 1,500 euros depending on the year
Some years the rigging is fine and you spend 800 euros total. The year the standing rigging is due, or the sails give up, you spend 4,000. Average it over a decade or it will ambush you.
The TAEMUP: the French annual tax most foreigners forget
If your boat is French-flagged, or kept in France under certain conditions, there is an annual tax: the TAEMUP (taxe annuelle sur les engins maritimes a usage personnel, the renamed DAFN). It is calculated from the hull length and the administrative horsepower of the engine, and it falls due each year by 31 March.
For a modest cruising boat it is a few hundred euros, not a few thousand, but it is a real line and it surprises foreign owners who assumed the berth fee was the only recurring French charge. Note it is the boat's flag and basing that trigger it, not your nationality, which is the same principle running through the VAT status of a boat in EU waters.
Fuel, gas and the small change
Sailing boats spend little on fuel, and this line is genuinely modest for most cruisers. A season of motoring in and out of marinas and the odd windless passage might be 200 to 500 euros of diesel. Add gas for the cooker, a SIM for data, marina laundry, pump-outs and the inevitable chandlery impulse buys, and the miscellaneous pot is a few hundred euros more. Powerboat owners can ignore this paragraph; their fuel line dwarfs everything else here.
Adding it up: a real 12-metre year
Here is my actual annual envelope for a 12-metre sailing boat, Atlantic-based, DIY-minded, hauled out each winter:
- berth, around 2,800 euros
- insurance, around 1,200 euros
- winter haul-out and storage, around 1,700 euros
- maintenance, anodes, antifoul, servicing, averaged at 1,800 euros
- TAEMUP, around 300 euros
- fuel, gas and sundries, around 800 euros
That totals roughly 8,600 euros a year. Move the same boat to Nice, add a yard for the work I do myself, and you cross 14,000 fast. The 10 percent rule was not lying. It was just describing a more expensive life than mine.
The lines people forget until they hit
A clean annual budget covers the predictable spend. The boat also serves up irregular big-ticket items that wreck a budget if you do not provision for them. Standing rigging on a sailing boat is the classic: replace it roughly every 10 to 15 years and a re-rig on a 12-metre boat runs into several thousand euros in one hit. A new mainsail and genoa together can be 4,000 to 6,000 euros. An engine rebuild or replacement dwarfs everything. The honest move is to set aside a sinking fund, perhaps 1,000 to 1,500 euros a year on top of running costs, so the year the rigging is due does not arrive as a crisis.
There is also depreciation, which is not a cash cost until you sell, but it is real. Older fibreglass cruisers have largely bottomed out and hold their value reasonably, which is one quiet argument for buying a sound 1990s boat over a depreciating new one. A surveyor's eye at purchase pays for itself here, and the used sailboat hull inspection points are the screen I use before I ever pay for a survey.
Where I genuinely cut costs
Some economies are false and some are real. The real ones, in my experience:
- learn to antifoul, service the engine and change anodes yourself: this alone shifts an Atlantic boat from 9 to 10 percent down toward 6 to 7 percent of value
- base off the Cote d'Azur: the berth saving is the biggest single lever in the whole budget
- haul out yearly rather than paying for two lifts plus afloat berth in some hybrid arrangement that ends up costing more than either
- buy your own antifoul and anodes rather than letting a yard supply at markup
The false economies, the ones I have learned not to make: skimping on insurance cover, stretching the rigging past its life, and deferring the engine service to save 200 euros. Each of those turns into a four-figure bill, usually at the worst moment.
What the slogan misses
The 10 percent rule treats all owners as the same. They are not. The two biggest levers, by a distance, are where you berth and how much work you do yourself. Choose an Atlantic or Languedoc berth over the Cote d'Azur and learn to antifoul, and you can run a capable cruising boat in France for 6 to 7 percent of her value. Choose the Riviera and hand everything to a yard, and 12 percent is closer to the truth.
Build the budget from these lines, not the slogan. Then add 15 percent, because the boat will find a way to spend it.
