A passage plan sounds like something you need a navigator's table and a brass set of dividers to produce. For a first short coastal hop it is a single sheet of paper with seven headings, filled in the night before over a cup of tea. The point is not the paperwork. The point is that the act of filling it in forces you to notice the thing you would otherwise have missed, which is usually the tide, or the one rock on the way in, or the fact that the marina office shuts before you arrive.
Here is the template I still use, the legal reason it exists, and a worked example for a typical beginner's day.
Why bother (the legal bit, briefly)
Passage planning is not just good sense, it is a requirement. Under SOLAS Chapter V, regulation 34, all vessels, including small leisure craft, are expected to plan their voyage, taking account of weather, tides, the boat, the crew and the navigational dangers. SOLAS regulation 27 of the same chapter requires you to carry adequate and up to date charts and publications for the voyage. You will almost never be checked, but if anything goes wrong, "I had a plan" is a very different position from "we just set off".
For a short day sail the plan can be brief. For a Channel crossing or a Biscay leg it grows into something serious. Start the habit now, on the easy days, and it will be second nature when the passages get longer.
The seven headings
Write these down and fill in each one. If a heading is blank, you have found the thing you need to go and check.
- Where and when. Start point, destination, the date, your planned departure and arrival times. Add bail-out harbours you could divert to.
- Weather. The forecast, the trend, and any warning. Read it the night before and again in the morning.
- Tides. Times of high and low water at both ends, the range, and the direction and timing of any tidal stream along the route.
- Route and waypoints. The track you intend to follow, key waypoints, courses to steer, and the hazards to avoid (rocks, shoals, traffic lanes).
- Distance and timing. How far it is, your boat's likely speed, so how long it takes, and therefore what time you must leave to arrive in daylight and on a fair tide.
- Pilotage at each end. The harbour entrance details: marks, lights, the recommended approach, depths, and the VHF channel for the marina.
- Safety and comms. Who you have told ashore, your check-in time, distress procedure, and that the right people know your plan.
That is it. Seven headings, one side of paper.
Filling in the weather and tide
These two are where beginners get caught, so give them the most attention.
For weather, get a current marine forecast rather than a phone weather app aimed at people on the beach. Meteo France updates its coastal bulletins three times a day, around 06:15, 12:15 and 18:15, covering out to 20 nautical miles offshore. If you are not yet confident pulling the right numbers out of it, my guide to reading a weather forecast for the first time shows the four things that decide whether you go, and France marine weather forecast in English covers where to get the bulletins in a language you can read fast.
For tide, the killer detail on the French Atlantic and Channel coasts is the stream, not just the height. A spring range of 6 metres or more at somewhere like Saint-Malo drives a fierce stream, and a couple of knots of foul tide on a 5 knot boat halves your speed over the ground. Plan to ride the tide, not fight it, and time your departure around it.
A worked example
Say you are doing a short coastal hop, maybe 18 nautical miles between two harbours you have not visited.
- Where and when: leave harbour A at 0900, arrive harbour B around 1300, with a bail-out option at a third harbour halfway.
- Weather: forecast force 3 to 4 from the west, no warning, good visibility, steady through the day. Go.
- Tides: high water at the destination at 1230, so a rising tide carries you in and there is plenty of water in the entrance on arrival. The stream sets fair along the coast from 1000.
- Route: a single coastal track clear of the offshore rocks, two waypoints, courses to steer noted, nothing to thread.
- Distance and timing: 18 miles at 5 knots is roughly 3.5 hours sailing, so a 0900 start lands you mid-afternoon with daylight in hand.
- Pilotage at B: red and green pier heads (remember France is IALA Region A, red to port entering), leading line noted, marina on a working VHF channel from the pilot.
- Safety and comms: partner ashore knows the plan and the 1330 check-in time, VHF distress procedure to hand, lifejackets on.
Read like that, the plan does its real job: it shows you, before you leave, that the day works. If the tide had been foul all afternoon, or the office shut at noon, the plan would have flagged it while you could still change it.
The pilotage end is where plans earn their keep
Most beginner trouble happens not on the open-water middle of a passage but at the two ends, getting out of one harbour and into the next. So give the pilotage headings real attention. For the destination, note the entrance marks and lights, the recommended approach, the least depth you will cross and at what state of tide, any drying patches, and the marina VHF channel. Remember France uses IALA Region A buoyage, so entering from seaward you keep red to port and green to starboard, the reverse of the North American convention that catches visiting American crews out.
Write the entry down as a short sequence: which mark you pick up first, what course it puts you on, what you should see next. A first-timer arriving off a strange harbour at the end of a tiring day does not want to be reading a pilot book for the first time with the boat moving. Having it written on your plan, in order, turns a nervous arrival into a tick-list.
Carrying the right charts and tools
The legal requirement to carry adequate, up to date charts is not box-ticking. An out of date chart can miss a new wreck, a moved buoy or a changed depth, and the official French chart authority issues corrections through notices to mariners for exactly that reason. Whether you navigate on paper, on a chartplotter or on an app, make sure the charts are current for the waters you are crossing, and never rely on a single electronic device with no backup. A paper chart and a hand-bearing compass weigh almost nothing and work when the batteries do not.
Keep your filled-in plan somewhere you can read it underway, in a chart-table clip or a waterproof pouch in the cockpit. A plan left below where you cannot see it is a plan you will not use.
How it connects to everything else
A passage plan is the spine that the other skills hang off. The weather reading feeds the go/no-go. The VHF channels and distress procedure come straight off your using the VHF for the first time in France homework. And on the day you go out alone, the plan is even more important because there is no one to catch your mistakes; that is why a written plan is part of every first solo day-sail in France.
Keep it simple and keep doing it
Do not let the word "plan" make this grander than it is. Seven headings, one sheet, the night before. The discipline is in doing it every single time, even for the trip you have done ten times, because the tide and the weather are different every day even when the route is not.
The first few feel like homework. By the end of a season the headings live in your head and you fill them in while the kettle boils. That quiet half hour the night before is the cheapest insurance in boating, and it is the habit that separates a crew who get caught out from a crew who saw it coming.
