The question lands at every marina bar in France eventually. You have done a few charter weeks, you have caught the bug, and someone asks whether you should just buy a boat. The honest answer depends almost entirely on how many weeks a year you actually get on the water, and the only way to see it clearly is to run both columns over five years instead of one summer. So I did, with real French numbers, for a couple cruising a 12-metre boat.
The charter column
Chartering is a clean, predictable cost. You pay for the weeks you use and walk away. No berth, no antifoul, no winter, no 3am bilge pump.
A bareboat week on a sensible cruising monohull in France, in season, broadly runs 3,000 to 6,000 euros depending on boat, region and exactly which week. Let us take a middle figure of 4,500 euros a week for a comfortable 12-metre charter, which is realistic for a popular boat in a good week away from the absolute peak.
Then the extras the brochure quietly adds:
- the security deposit, typically a few thousand euros held on a card or insured down with a damage waiver of several hundred euros a week
- fuel and final cleaning, often a few hundred euros a charter
- an advance provisioning allowance on crewed boats, around 30 percent, though on bareboat you simply buy your own food
For modelling, call the all-in cost of a charter week 5,000 euros once the damage waiver, fuel and cleaning are folded in. The detail of deposits and waivers is its own subject in chartering versus owning a boat in France, but 5,000 a week, all in, is a fair planning figure.
The owning column
Owning is the opposite shape: a big lump at the start, then a steady annual cost whether you sail or not.
Take a sound second-hand 12-metre cruiser. The capital is yours either way (you can sell it back), so the real cost of ownership is the running cost plus depreciation, not the purchase price. The running side, for an Atlantic-based, DIY-minded owner, lands near 8,600 euros a year on the model I keep:
- berth, around 2,800 euros (a typical Atlantic figure; a Mediterranean berth averages nearer 5,159 euros)
- insurance, around 1,200 euros
- winter haul-out and storage, around 1,700 euros
- maintenance, antifoul, anodes, servicing, averaged at 1,800 euros
- the French TAEMUP tax, around 300 euros
- fuel, gas and sundries, around 800 euros
That whole structure, line by line, is the subject of the annual running costs of a boat in France. Add depreciation. An older fibreglass cruiser bought well has largely bottomed out and holds its value, so call depreciation a modest 1,500 to 2,500 euros a year rather than the brutal figure a new boat suffers.
So the true annual cost of owning, running plus depreciation, sits around 10,000 to 11,000 euros a year for this boat on the Atlantic. Move it to the Riviera and hand the work to a yard and you cross 14,000 fast.
The five-year crossover
Now the comparison that actually answers the bar-room question. Charter at 5,000 euros a week, all in. Own at roughly 10,500 euros a year, all in.
- own one week a year: charter costs 5,000, owning costs 10,500. Charter wins, easily.
- own two weeks a year: charter 10,000, owning 10,500. Line ball.
- three weeks a year: charter 15,000, owning still about 10,500. Owning wins.
- five weeks a year: charter 25,000, owning 10,500. Owning wins handsomely.
Over five years the picture compounds. Two weeks a year of chartering is 50,000 euros of charter fees. Five years of owning the Atlantic boat is roughly 52,500 euros of running and depreciation, and at the end you still hold a boat you can sell. At three or more weeks a year, owning is simply cheaper over five years, and the gap widens every week you add.
The crossover, on these numbers, sits at about two weeks of cruising a year. Below it, charter. Above it, owning starts to pay, and the more you sail the more decisively it wins.
But the money is only half the answer
The numbers say own if you sail three weeks or more. The numbers do not capture the rest, and the rest matters.
Chartering buys freedom from responsibility. You do not lie awake in a February gale worrying about a boat 800 miles away. You do not lose a April weekend to antifoul. You can charter in Greece one year and France the next without selling anything. For a couple with demanding jobs and four weeks of holiday, the higher per-week cost of chartering can be the cheaper choice once you price your own time and stress.
Owning buys a relationship. The boat is yours, set up your way, with your kit aboard and your charts marked. You can sail a Tuesday in May on a whim. You learn one boat deeply instead of fumbling a different layout every charter. And you can keep her in France over winter and pick up where you left off, with the paperwork laid out in leaving your boat in France over winter.
The hidden costs that skew the model
Both columns hide costs the headline figures miss, and they pull in opposite directions.
Chartering hides the deposit risk. A few thousand euros sits on your card for the week, and a damage waiver of several hundred euros buys it down but never fully. Catch a lazy-line on the prop or scuff a Mediterranean stern-to mooring and the dispute over the deposit can sour the whole holiday. You also pay full price in peak weeks, because charter pricing tracks demand precisely, and the weeks you can actually take off work are usually the expensive ones.
Owning hides the irregular big hits. The model above funds a sinking fund for rigging and sails, but the year an engine fails or the standing rigging is condemned, the cash arrives in one lump. It also hides the time cost: a April weekend lost to antifoul, a February gale spent worrying about a boat 800 miles away. Price your own time honestly and the gap between the columns narrows. For a foreign owner there are French taxes and paperwork too, the kind catalogued in the hidden costs of cruising France, that a charterer never touches.
How to read your own answer
Be honest about the weeks. Not the weeks you dream of, the weeks you will actually take off work and spend afloat. Most people overestimate by half.
- one or two weeks a year, no appetite for maintenance: charter, and spend the saved capital on better boats and better weeks
- three to six weeks a year, happy to do your own antifoul: own, base on the Atlantic or Languedoc, and the five-year sum falls in your favour
- a sabbatical, a season, or early retirement afloat: own without hesitation, because the per-week cost of owning collapses the more you use the boat
Run both columns over five years, drop in your real weeks, and the spreadsheet usually answers before the bar bill arrives. For most occasional cruisers, charter is the rational choice. For anyone who has reached three serious weeks a year, France rewards the owner, and rewards the one who keeps the boat cheaply, as set out in how to cruise France on a tight budget.
One last caution against treating the model as gospel. It assumes you buy the boat well and keep her sensibly. Buy badly, overpay at survey, choose a Riviera berth and hand every job to a yard, and the owning column balloons past the figures here and the crossover shifts out to four or five weeks a year. Buy a sound second-hand boat, base on the Atlantic and do your own antifoul, and the crossover pulls in toward a single fortnight. The boat and the choices, not the slogan, decide it. The line-by-line owning figures, the ones that feed this whole comparison, are built up in the annual running costs of a boat in France, and the seaworthiness reserve that sits behind them in the cost of keeping a boat seaworthy in France.
