A Dutch skipper once told me that the French do not dislike foreign boaters, they dislike rude ones, and that the line between the two is mostly about manners you cannot see until you cross them. He was right. After several seasons cruising France I have made most of these mistakes myself, watched other visiting crews make the rest, and slowly worked out the unwritten rules that keep a harbourmaster on your side. None of them are hard. All of them matter more than your boat handling.
Here are the ten that come up again and again.
1. Skipping Bonjour
This is the big one, and it is not optional politeness, it is the price of entry to any French interaction. You say bonjour before you ask anything, to the harbourmaster, the baker, the lock keeper, the woman at the chandler. Walking up and launching straight into a question, even a polite one in good French, lands as cold and presumptuous. The greeting is the handshake. Get it wrong and the rest of the conversation runs uphill. There is a short list of the phrases that matter in our guide to boating French phrases, and bonjour sits at the top for a reason.
2. Walking Across Other Boats
In a packed Mediterranean harbour you may be rafted three or four deep, and crossing a neighbour's boat to reach the quay is sometimes unavoidable. The etiquette is fixed: cross at the bow, never through the cockpit, take your shoes off if the deck is teak, and do it quickly and quietly. Treating someone's foredeck as a public footpath, lingering, or letting children clamber across is one of the fastest ways to annoy a French berth holder. Ask first if anyone is aboard.
3. Getting the Flags Wrong
Fly the French courtesy flag from the starboard spreader, the highest point on that side, and keep it clean. A bleached, frayed tricolore flown below another flag reads as careless at best and disrespectful at worst. Your own ensign goes at the stern. The courtesy flag is not a legal requirement in the way some visitors fear, but it is firmly expected, and a tatty one is worse than none. Replace it when it starts to fade.
4. Fouling Your Neighbour's Lines
On the Med you pick up a lazy line and moor stern-to or bows-to, and the temptation when short-handed is to borrow whatever line is nearest. Do not re-route a berth holder's mooring lines, do not use their cleats, and do not let your warps cross the pontoon at ankle height where someone will trip in the dark. Carry enough of your own lines, stow the tails neatly, and keep the hose coiled. A dock strewn with another crew's gear is a genuine grievance, not a small one.
5. Treating the Capitainerie Like a Reception Desk
The harbourmaster's office is the hub of the port, and the staff hold the keys to your berth, your shower code, your wifi and your weather advice. They are not hotel receptionists, and they do not work to your schedule. Many close for lunch from around 1200 to 1400 and shut by early evening. Turn up in their hours, lead with bonjour, and accept that the answer to "is there a berth" might be a shrug and a wait. Patience and courtesy get you a better spot than impatience ever will.
6. Helping Yourself at the Market
At the open-air market the stallholder picks the fruit, not you. Reaching in and squeezing the peaches yourself is a small thing that marks you instantly as a tourist and irritates the seller. Point, say how much you want, and let them choose. The same goes for the bread queue at the boulangerie, where you wait your turn and you do not haggle. Market manners and timing matter enough that I gave them their own section in the guide to provisioning a boat in France.
There is a subtlety here that visitors miss. When you arrive on a busy summer afternoon and the visitors' pontoon is full, the staff are juggling a queue of boats against berths that locals are still occupying. Standing on the pontoon shouting up at the office window does not move you up the list. A calm radio call on channel 9, a polite walk-in, and a willingness to wait or take a less perfect berth gets you sorted faster. The harbourmaster remembers the easy crews and finds them a spot the next time.
7. Making Wash in the Harbour
Motoring through a mooring field or a packed marina at anything above dead slow throws a wake that sets every boat rocking and slopping. In France, as anywhere, you keep it to a crawl inside the breakwater, and you watch your wash near anchored boats and people swimming off the stern. A skipper who comes in fast and throws spray over a neighbour's drying laundry will be remembered, and not kindly.
8. Being Loud After Dark
French harbours wind down earlier than some Mediterranean neighbours. Cockpit parties that run past 2200 with the music up will draw complaints, and in many ports the staff will come and ask you to stop. Sound carries over water and across a marina far further than it feels from inside your own cockpit. Keep the volume down after dinner, and save the celebrating for ashore.
The flip side is just as true. The French take the apero seriously, the early-evening drink in the cockpit, and a quiet round of drinks with the neighbouring crew is a fine way to make friends on the pontoon. The line is not silence, it is consideration. A relaxed glass of rose at seven with the boat next door is welcome. A speaker thumping at eleven is not. Read the harbour: if the boats around you have gone quiet, take the hint.
9. Ignoring the Anchoring Rules
Anchoring is tightly regulated in parts of France, especially along the Cote d'Azur, where seagrass protection bans anchoring over Posidonia beds and large yachts face fines running into the thousands of euros for dropping the hook in the wrong place. Smaller boats have more freedom, but the rules are real and increasingly enforced by patrol boats in summer. Check the local regulations before you assume a pretty bay is open, and use the designated eco-moorings where they exist. There is a second courtesy at anchor too: leave room. Arriving late into a crowded bay and dropping your hook so close that you swing into a boat already settled is a classic visitor error. The first boat in sets the swing, and you fit around it, not the other way round.
10. Forgetting to Say Goodbye
The bookend to bonjour is the farewell, and it matters just as much. You do not slip out of the boulangerie in silence, you say merci, au revoir, bonne journee. You thank the lock keeper as the gates open. You wave to the harbourmaster on the way out. These small closings are the texture of French daily life, and a visiting crew that observes them stops being tourists and starts being guests. That shift in how you are treated is worth more than any clever piece of kit aboard.
None of this is about grovelling or performing. It is about reading a country that takes its courtesies seriously and meeting it halfway. Do that and France opens up, from the harbourmaster who finds you a berth on a full August weekend to the restaurant owner who fits you in. On that last point, the same instincts that win over a harbourmaster will win you a good table ashore, which I cover in the piece on finding good harbour restaurants in France.
