The tender is the most argued-over piece of kit on our boat. My wife wants something we can lift up a beach without a chiropractor on standby; I want something that will get us ashore against a Mediterranean chop and tow behind us through a hundred canal locks without sinking. France makes you reconcile those two wishes, because a cruise here usually means both the canals and the coast, and the perfect canal tender is rarely the perfect coastal one.
Two very different jobs
Think about what the tender actually does in France, because the canal half and the coastal half pull in opposite directions.
On the canals, your boat is tied to the bank most nights and the tender is almost decorative. It rides on the foredeck or tows astern through lock after lock, and what you want is something light, low and unfussy that will not snag on a lock gate or foul the prop when the lock fills. A simple roll-up or a small inflatable does this beautifully. A heavy RIB up on the foredeck just spoils your air draught, and air draught is precious on the French canals where some bridges leave you very little headroom.
On the coast, the tender is your only way ashore from an anchorage, and the job gets serious. Off the Hyeres islands of Porquerolles you might be rowing or motoring half a mile against wind and swell with a week's shopping aboard. Now you want a rigid or semi-rigid hull, a proper outboard and enough freeboard to keep the spray out.
The four honest options
There is no perfect tender, only trade-offs. Here is how the four common choices stack up for a French cruise.
- Roll-up inflatable with a slatted or air floor. Lightest and cheapest, packs into a locker, perfect for canals. Hopeless to row, wallows in a chop, short life in the Med sun. A Gemini-style 2-metre air-deck runs around 1,590 dollars new, so reckon on a similar figure in euros.
- Inflatable RIB. Rigid hull, soft tubes, rows and motors far better, planes with a small outboard. The default coastal cruising tender. Heavier and bulkier, and the hull makes it awkward to stow on a small foredeck.
- Hard dinghy (GRP, ply or aluminium). Rows like a dream, lasts forever, tows well. Vulnerable alongside in a marina, hard to stow, and noisy banging against the hull at anchor. A purist's choice.
- Folding or nesting hard dinghy. A clever compromise that stows flat and rows well, but they are expensive and the assembly gets tiresome.
For a couple doing both the canals and the Med, we landed on a 2.5 to 2.8 metre RIB. It is the all-rounder: tough enough for the coast, just light enough to manhandle, and it survives being towed through locks if you bring it in close on a short painter.
Size and weight, the numbers that matter
The temptation is always to buy the biggest tender that will fit, and then regret the weight every time you launch it. Size it to your crew and your stowage, not your ambition.
A 2.5 metre tender carries two adults and the shopping comfortably and three at a push. A 3 metre version with a 5 hp outboard can be carried up a beach by two adults, which is roughly the upper limit of what a couple can wrestle without help. Beyond that you are into launch-and-recovery systems and davits.
Weight is where the choices bite. A roll-up packs down to something one person carries. A 2.8 metre RIB hull on its own is a two-person lift, and once you add the outboard it stays in the water or on davits for the season. The outboard matters here too, which is why I have written separately about outboard size and security in French marinas, because the engine is the heavy, stealable, expensive part of the whole package.
Towing versus stowing
How you carry the tender shapes everything else. On the canals, towing on a short painter is normal and easy: the water is flat and the speeds are low. Bring it right in behind the transom before each lock so it does not get caught between the boat and the lock wall as the water moves.
On the coast, towing offshore is asking to lose it. A following sea will fill an inflatable or flip it, and a long passage will saw through the painter. For anything beyond a short hop in settled weather I deflate and stow, or lift onto davits. That argues again for a tender you can actually lift, which loops back to keeping the size sensible.
For the canal leg specifically, the tender is part of a wider kit list that includes long warps and a good boat hook for the locks, and I have pulled that together in the guide to boat hooks, warps and lock kit for the canals.
Hypalon or PVC
If you go inflatable, the fabric is the decision that determines how long it lasts. PVC is cheaper and lighter but the French Mediterranean sun is brutal on it; a PVC tube left uncovered in Provence can start failing in three or four seasons. Hypalon (CSM) costs more, often 30 to 50 per cent more, but shrugs off UV and lasts a decade or more. For a boat that will spend summers in the Med, hypalon is the false economy you should pay for. For a canal-only boat that lives mostly under cover, PVC is fine.
Whatever you buy, get a cover. A simple chaps cover over the tubes doubles the life of any inflatable in the south.
Oars, pump and the kit that lives in the tender
The tender itself is only the start. What you keep aboard it decides whether a flat outboard battery or a torn tube turns into a soaking or a non-event, and on a French cruise you will need all of it sooner or later.
Carry oars you can actually row with, not the toy paddles that come with most inflatables. The day your outboard refuses to start at the far end of a Med anchorage, with the wind pushing you offshore, a proper pair of oars is the difference between an awkward row home and a call to the marina. A roll-up rows badly whatever you do, which is one more argument for a RIB on the coast.
Keep a small foot pump or a 12-volt pump aboard. Inflatable tubes lose pressure overnight in cool air and gain it in the Provence sun, and a tube that is soft in the morning chop is a wet ride. Top it up before you set off.
The other essentials that live in our tender all season:
- A small kedge anchor and a few metres of line, so you can hold the tender off a beach while you land, and so you have a lunch hook. I have written about the dinghy anchor and kedge kit separately because it is more useful than people expect.
- A bailer and a sponge, because a tender at anchor collects rain and spray.
- A waterproof bag for phones, wallets and the shopping, since the row back from market in a chop will wet everything loose.
- A long painter and a separate short one, the long for towing on the canals, the short for bringing it in tight at a lock or a busy pontoon.
None of this is expensive, and all of it gets used.
What we would buy again
For our mixed canal-and-coast cruising we run a 2.7 metre hypalon RIB with a small four-stroke outboard, a chaps cover, and a roll-up kept deflated in a locker as a backup and as the canal tender when we want the foredeck clear. It is not the cheapest setup and it is not the lightest, but it does both French jobs without complaint.
If you are a Med charterer who will only ever use the marina, you barely need a tender at all, and the lazy-line stern-to berthing gets you ashore dry-footed every night. But if you are going to swing on your own anchor off the Lerins islands or explore a Brittany ria, the tender is your front door. Buy one you will actually launch.
