The big medical fears get all the attention. Most of us pack for the heart attack and the man overboard, then bleed quietly into a tea towel when a winch handle splits a knuckle in Concarneau. Nine summers cruising the French coast and into the canals taught me that the injuries that actually happen are small, stupid and frequent: a cracked filling on a baguette crust, a gashed shin on the boarding ladder, a thumb caught in a cleat. None of them will sink you. All of them can ruin a fortnight if you handle them badly, and the French system for dealing with them is excellent once you know where to look.
The tooth that goes at the worst moment
Teeth wait until you are at anchor off an island with no dentist for forty miles, then they fail. A lost filling, a chipped molar, a crown that comes loose: these are not life-threatening, but the pain is genuinely disabling and it does not let you sleep on watch.
Carry a dental repair kit. The temporary filling material sold in any French pharmacie costs around 8 to 12 euros and will reseat a crown or pack an open cavity well enough to get you to a chair. Clove oil, the old sailor's standby, still works as a topical for tooth pain and costs a few euros. That buys you days, not a cure.
When you need a real dentist, France has them everywhere, and on weekends there is an emergency rota. In Paris, SOS Dentaire runs an emergency service, weekdays roughly 7am to 6pm on 01 42 46 11 20 and weekends and evenings on 01 43 37 51 00. Outside Paris, your route to an out-of-hours dentist runs through the medical regulation line, which I will come to. A French dental consultation under the standard tariff is modest, often 23 to 30 euros for a basic act, though emergency and weekend rates climb. Keep every receipt and the carbon-copy feuille de soins if they give you a paper one, because that is what you claim against later.
If you are British, get your reciprocal cover sorted before you leave, because it pays at the French state rate. The detail on what the card covers and what it does not is worth reading in full in my piece on healthcare for British sailors in France, and the broader entry-and-cover picture is in health entry rules for France in 2026.
Cuts, the thing you will deal with most
Boats are a museum of sharp edges. The cuts that matter are the deep ones, the ones over a joint, and the ones from a fish hook or a rusty fitting where infection is the real enemy.
Stop the bleeding first. Firm direct pressure with a clean dressing for a solid ten minutes, no peeking, beats any clever technique. Most bleeding that looks dramatic stops if you simply hold it long enough. Elevate the limb if you can. A pressure dressing held with a triangular bandage frees your hands to steer.
Closing a wound at sea is a judgement call. Steri-strips or adhesive skin closures will hold a clean, straight cut that you can pull together easily, and they belong in every kit. A gaping wound, a cut to the face, or anything that exposes fat or muscle needs a professional and probably stitches, which work best within about six to eight hours of the injury. That is your clock. If you are eight hours from help, clean it hard, close it as best you can, dress it and go.
Tetanus is the boater's hidden risk. The French recommendation is a booster every twenty years for adults up to age 65, then every ten years after that, and any dirty wound, a puncture from a hook or a graze on a rusty ladder, is a reason to check your last booster was within that window. Sort it ashore before the trip, not in a clinic in Lorient.
Sprains, breaks and the things that look worse than they are
A turned ankle on a wet pontoon is the canal cruiser's classic. Rest, ice (a bag of frozen peas from the boat freezer), compression with an elastic bandage and elevation handle most sprains. If the joint will not bear any weight at all, or there is bony point tenderness, treat it as a possible fracture and get it x-rayed. France runs walk-in services for exactly this.
For a suspected break afloat, immobilise the limb in the position you find it, pad it well, and do not try to straighten anything. A SAM splint weighs almost nothing and earns its locker space.
Knowing who to call, and on what
This is the part visitors get wrong, so commit it to memory. Ashore or alongside in a French port, the medical emergency number is 15, the SAMU. The pan-European number 112 reaches the same help and works from any phone, including with no SIM. For something less than an emergency, out of hours, 116 117 connects you to the medical duty line in many regions. These are free.
At sea, the rules change completely and the radio is your lifeline. Channel 16 on the VHF raises the CROSS, the French coastguard, and they will patch you through to medical advice. For a genuine medical problem offshore, France runs a dedicated telemedicine service, the CCMM in Toulouse, staffed by emergency physicians who will talk you through treatment and decide whether you need lifting off. The full procedure for raising help on the water, and when a sprain becomes a callout, is in my guide to a medical emergency at sea in France, and the kit list that backs all of this up sits in the medical kit for French coastal cruising.
Finding a pharmacy when everything is shut
The French pharmacie is your first port of call for anything that is not an emergency, and the pharmacien can advise, dress a wound and sell you things that are prescription-only at home. Out of hours, the rota system is the pharmacie de garde. Every closed pharmacy posts the address of the duty one on its door, and the website 3237.fr (or dialling 3237, a paid number) lists them by location. In a tourist port in August you are rarely more than a short walk from one.
A few practical notes that cost me trouble before I learned them. French pharmacies often shut for two hours at lunch, roughly 12.30 to 2.30, which is exactly when a child slices a finger. Stock the painkillers, antiseptic and dressings before you need them. And learn three words: a pansement is a dressing, une attelle is a splint, and une ordonnance is the prescription you will need for stronger painkillers.
One thing that surprises British and American visitors is how much a French pharmacien is allowed to do. They are highly trained, many speak some English, and for a minor problem they will assess you, dress a wound, recommend and sell medication that would need a prescription at home, and tell you plainly when you need a doctor instead. For a grazed shin, a stye, a mild infection or a sting, the pharmacy is faster and cheaper than chasing a clinic, and the green cross sign is on almost every high street in France. Treat the pharmacie as your first stop for anything that is not bleeding hard or clearly broken, and you will save yourself a lot of time.
What I actually carry
After enough scrapes I settled on a kit that handles 95 percent of what a cruising season throws up: a generous supply of assorted dressings and a couple of pressure pads; steri-strips and a roll of zinc oxide tape; antiseptic wipes and a bottle of iodine solution; a SAM splint and two triangular bandages; an elastic compression bandage; tweezers and a hook-cutter for fishing mishaps; the dental kit and clove oil; paracetamol, ibuprofen and an antihistamine; and a small bottle of saline for flushing eyes and grit-filled cuts.
None of it is exotic. All of it has earned its place. The skill is not heroics, it is the calm habit of cleaning a wound properly, holding pressure long enough, and knowing that 15 ashore and channel 16 afloat are never more than a call away.
