The lift-out is the part of the French boating year that rewards planning and punishes improvisation. Turn up in October expecting a slot and you may find the convenient yard full, the travel-lift booked for a fortnight, and yourself driving three hours to a yard you have never seen. I have done that. I now book the autumn lift in June, and the whole thing runs like a timetable instead of a scramble.
This is the booking process as I work it, from first email to the boat on chocks.
When to book
The good yards fill their winter slots through the summer, especially those with a travel-lift big enough for boats over 12 metres. A spring antifoul lift in the Med and an autumn lift on the Atlantic are the two peak crunches. My rule is simple: book by midsummer for an autumn lift, and earlier still if your boat is over 12 metres, because the yards with the biggest hoists are the first to fill.
Season also moves the price. In the quiet months a 10-metre boat can be lifted for under 200 euros, while the same lift in the high-season rush costs more and is harder to get. If your schedule is flexible, a shoulder-season lift is cheaper and the yard has more time for you.
What you are actually booking
A lift-out in France is rarely one price. You are booking a chain of separate operations, and each is a line on the tariff:
- the lift out of the water (sortie d'eau), usually charged per metre of overall length
- a pressure wash of the hull (karcher), often a separate line
- time on the hard (stationnement or sejour a terre), charged per square metre per month
- chocks, props or a cradle if the boat needs one
- the relaunch (mise a l'eau), frequently charged as its own leg
For storage, open-air hardstanding runs around 3.70 euros per square metre per month at a representative Atlantic yard, with covered storage near 5.00 euros. Work that out for a real boat: a 12-metre hull with a 3.8-metre beam is about 45 square metres, so open-air storage is near 167 euros a month, or around 1,000 euros for a six-month winter. That is the floor, before lift, wash, and any work. The full anatomy of a winter ashore, line by line, is in the breakdown of wintering ashore in France and its yard costs.
The surcharges that catch you out
The quoted lift price assumes a weekday in working hours. Step outside that and the bill climbs. A French yard whose 2025-2026 tariff runs from October to September may add 50 percent outside normal hours and 100 percent on a Sunday. That matters most on the Atlantic and Channel coasts, where tide-locked yards launch on the tide, and a Sunday relaunch to catch a weather window can carry a full surcharge.
Other lines that do not show in the headline figure: disposal fees for old antifoul, oil and batteries, increasingly itemised under tightening environmental rules; a mast lift if you need the rig out, often 150 to 300 euros as a separate crane job; and labour at around 60 euros an hour including VAT for anything the yard does for you. Treating the lift as a fixed cost is the classic foreign-owner mistake. It is a base price with a stack of variables stacked on top.
The email that does the work
I never book a lift by phone alone, because I want it in writing and I want time to run the French through a translator. My booking email confirms, in order:
- the haul-out date and the relaunch date
- the lift and launch price per metre, stating whether each leg is charged separately
- the storage rate per square metre per month
- who positions the strops, and whether the yard or I am responsible
- whether I can do my own antifoul and underwater work
- whether I can stay aboard on the hard
That last point trips up more cruisers than the prices do. Plenty of yards forbid living aboard ashore for insurance and sanitation reasons, with no shore toilets or water near the hardstanding after hours. If you have booked a flight on the assumption you will sleep aboard for the week of work, find that out before you fly, because a hotel near a working boatyard in high season is its own small misery.
Confirming the lift type and the limits
Two physical limits decide whether the yard can take your boat at all: the travel-lift capacity and the maximum beam. A 30-tonne lift handles most cruising boats up to 13 or 14 metres, but a heavy long-keeler or a wide catamaran can exceed what a smaller hoist allows. Confirm both before you book, not on the slip. If the yard lifts on a crane rather than a hoist, you need your lifting points marked and may have to supply your own strops or spreader bar. The difference between a hoist and a crane, and which suits which boat, is covered in the guide to hauling out as a foreign owner at a French boatyard.
The day itself
Arrive rigged for the hoist dock, with fenders set for the slings and warps ready, your lifting points marked if it is a crane, and a card that works in France or cash, because some smaller yards still struggle with foreign cards. Be early. The hoist works to a tight schedule and a late arrival can lose your slot to the next boat.
Once the boat is in the slings, walk the hull with the yard before it goes on chocks. This is the only moment you will see the whole underwater profile clean, so look at the keel joint, the seacocks, the cutless bearing, the saildrive seal, and the gelcoat for the blistering that signals osmosis. A lift is the natural time to combine jobs, so plan the antifoul, anode swap and any survey for the same hoist rather than paying twice. If you are buying rather than maintaining, do not commission the expensive part of a survey until the boat is up, and work through the points in 10 hull inspection tips when buying a used sailboat while she sits in the slings.
Open air or under cover
When you book the hard-standing, the yard will usually offer open-air or covered storage, and the price gap is real: around 3.70 euros per square metre per month outdoors against near 5.00 euros under a roof. For most fibreglass cruising boats the covered premium is wasted money, because a well-prepared hull sits out a French winter without complaint. Where it earns its keep is on varnished classics, wooden boats, or anything where UV and frost on brightwork matter. The exception is the Atlantic and Channel coasts, where wind-driven rain runs from November and a covered slot keeps the deck gear dry enough that spring recommissioning is a morning rather than a weekend. Decide which you want before you book, because the covered slots are fewer and go first.
Planning the relaunch
The lift is only half the booking. The relaunch needs as much thought, because recommissioning eats a day or two: refitting the log impeller, checking and greasing seacocks, antifouling the saildrive or prop, reconnecting and testing the engine cooling, and a careful look at every through-hull before she goes back in. I build that time into the plan and treat launch day as the end of the work, not the start of it. The year I lost a weekend to a seized seacock, with the boat hanging in the slings while I freed it, taught me to do the through-hulls in March, not on launch day.
Book early, get it in writing, confirm the limits, and the French lift-out stops being a gamble. It becomes the most useful day in the boating year, the one moment you can see and fix everything below the waterline at once.
