Islands are why a lot of us keep a boat. You can reach them other ways, by ferry, by causeway, but it is not the same as carrying your own bed and kitchen to a place that the day-trippers leave every evening. France has a long list of them, Atlantic and Mediterranean, wild and groomed. Here is how I would rank the ones worth pointing the bow at, with the practical detail that decides whether you anchor, berth or stay away.
I have weighted this towards islands that reward an overnight stay by boat specifically. A place that is glorious to walk but offers nowhere to leave the boat drops down the order.
Belle-Ile-en-Mer
The largest of the Breton islands and, for me, the most complete cruising destination on the Atlantic coast. Two harbours, Le Palais and Sauzon, plus nine recognised anchorages dotted round the coast, so you can almost always find a lee whatever the wind does. Le Palais hides behind a tidal gate into its wet dock; Sauzon dries onto hard mud and keeps about 120 visitor places. The east-coast beach of Les Grands Sables is a beautiful sheltered overnight in westerlies. You could spend a fortnight here and not repeat an anchorage. Start with the Belle-Ile-en-Mer sailing guide.
Glenan archipelago
A scatter of low islands and reefs about 10 nautical miles south of Concarneau, ringing a central lagoon, La Chambre, that turns Caribbean turquoise in sun. You anchor over sand in two to four metres at the right tide, the holding is good clear of the weed, and Saint-Nicolas is the one island you can land on freely. The passes in are reef-strewn and the whole place is exposed to the south, so it is a fair-weather paradise rather than an all-weather base. There is nowhere I would rather be on a flat northerly day. The Glenan archipelago anchorage guide covers the pilotage you cannot skip.
Porquerolles and the Hyeres islands
The Mediterranean answer to Belle-Ile. Porquerolles has white-sand beaches, vineyards and a port of 689 berths (including around 70 buoys) that takes boats up to 45 metres, with visitor reservations opening from the first of January. Port-Cros next door is a national park with strict mooring rules, and the Ile du Levant is half naval range, half naturist colony. The whole group is governed by seagrass protection: anchor on the sand patches, and remember boats over 24 metres are banned from anchoring over the meadows. Full notes in Porquerolles and the Hyeres islands.
Ile de Re
Flat, white-washed, hollyhock-lined and very pretty, the Ile de Re is the gentle one. Its star turn is the harbour town of Saint-Martin-de-Re, a Vauban-fortified port where you lock into a wet dock through a 12-metre gate with depths to 3.1 metres, opening about 2.5 hours either side of high water. The island is best explored by the bike, which every visiting crew seems to hire. It lacks the dramatic anchorages of Belle-Ile but makes up for it in charm and easy shore life. The size of boats allowed into the wet dock is capped at 21 metres with a 2.5-metre draught, which keeps the basin civilised and the superyachts away. See Ile de Re by boat.
Lerins islands, off Cannes
Two small islands a short hop off Cannes, Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Honorat, that perform a magic trick: drop the anchor in the channel between them and one of the most crowded coasts in Europe goes silent. Pine forest, a fort, a working monastery, and clear water. Holding is variable over weed, so dive your anchor in. As a lunch stop or a calm-night escape from the Riviera marinas, nothing beats it. The last ferry back to Cannes empties Sainte-Marguerite of its picnic crowds by early evening, and the anchored boats inherit the channel. The Lerins islands anchorage near Cannes explains where the sand actually lies.
Ile d'Yeu
About 10 nautical miles off the Vendee coast, the Ile d'Yeu feels further out than that, which is its appeal. Port-Joinville is built into an old fishing harbour with around 600 berths, roughly 200 of them kept for stopovers, so you can usually get in. The island has a wild south-west coast of granite and small coves and a gentler, sandy north. It is the kind of place where you hire bikes, find a deserted beach and forget what day it is. A proper offshore-island feel without a long passage. The harbour can get a swell working into it in northerlies, so check the berth orientation, and bear in mind the fishing fleet still works out of here and has priority on the move; keep clear of the basin entrance when the boats are coming and going at dawn.
Houat and Hoedic
The little siblings out in the bay of Quiberon, Houat and Hoedic are low, sandy and gloriously simple: no cars to speak of, a few houses, beaches that on a settled day look tropical. Anchoring off is the usual approach, with limited shelter, so they are settled-weather islands you fold into a south Brittany cruise. After the crowds of Belle-Ile, the emptiness here is the whole point. Our Houat and Hoedic Morbihan islands guide has the anchorages.
Lavezzi islands, southern Corsica
Granite-boulder islands in a nature reserve in the Bouches de Bonifacio, between Corsica and Sardinia, with water the colour of a pool. The strait is around 7 nautical miles wide and funnels wind and tide, so this is a fair-weather destination you reach with a careful eye on the forecast. Pick up a park buoy rather than anchoring over the protected seabed. For sheer beauty it might top the whole list; for ease it sits near the bottom, which is the honest trade.
Chausey, off Granville
A tidal archipelago off Granville with one of the largest spring ranges in the world swirling around it, the Chausey islands almost double their land area at low water. Pilotage is serious and the anchorages dry or shift with the tide, but on a calm day the maze of granite and sand is extraordinary, and very few foreign boats make the effort. This one is for confident tidal navigators only. The main anchorage by the Grande Ile gives reasonable shelter in settled weather, and there is a single small hotel and a couple of cafes ashore, but you arrive self-sufficient and you leave when the tide and the forecast both agree, not before.
How I would plan an island-hopping cruise
The split is geographic and it shapes everything. The Atlantic islands (Belle-Ile, the Glenan, Re, Yeu, Houat, Hoedic, Chausey) live and breathe by the tide; your arrivals at the gated harbours and many of the anchorages are timed by the height of water, and the ranges are huge. The Mediterranean islands (Porquerolles, the Hyeres group, Lerins, Lavezzi) have negligible tide but are ruled instead by wind, the Mistral on the mainland coast and the funnelling straits in Corsica, and by hardening seagrass-protection rules.
So I plan the two regions differently. In Brittany and Biscay I build the day around high water and keep a tide app to hand. In the Med I build it around the wind forecast and a fallback bay on the sheltered side of each island. Either way I keep the islands saved as a ranked itinerary in BoatMap, with the visitor-berth counts and tidal-gate times attached, because the difference between a perfect island night and a long motor back to the mainland is usually one missed gate or one ignored forecast.
