The first time I berthed in Saint-Malo off a long Channel hop, I tied up, plugged in my shore lead, flicked the battery charger on, and watched nothing happen. No light, no hum. I spent twenty minutes convinced my charger had died. The actual problem was simpler and more French: the pontoon bollard wanted a token I did not have, the socket was a different size to my plug, and the woman in the capitainerie had gone home for a two-hour lunch. That afternoon taught me more about French marina facilities than any pilot book.
If you are crossing from the UK, the Netherlands or Scandinavia and you are used to your home club where you just turn up and plug in, France will catch you out in small, recurring ways. None of it is hard once you know the shape of it. Here is what I wish someone had told me before my first season.
The plug on the pontoon
European marinas, France included, run on the blue CEE connector, the same family of plug you see on a campsite or a touring caravan. That part is good news, because your boat almost certainly already has one. The catch is the amperage.
Most visitor berths give you a 16 amp supply, and on smaller resident pontoons it can drop to as little as 6 amps. Yachts up to roughly 10 metres without air conditioning live happily on 16 amps. Once you are over 10 metres, or you are running a water heater, a kettle and a battery charger at the same time, you start tripping the bollard. Larger boats from 10 to 16 metres are usually wired for a 32 amp socket, and the very big stuff over 20 metres can need two 32 amp feeds.
Here is the trap. A 16 amp blue plug and a 32 amp blue plug are physically different sizes. If your boat has a 32 amp inlet and the pontoon only offers 16 amp sockets, your lead will not fit. Carry a 16 to 32 amp adaptor. I keep both adaptors and a 10 metre extension lead in a dry bag in the cockpit locker, because the bollard is never where you want it to be, and on a finger pontoon you can end up reaching across two berths.
Do the sums before you sail. A 16 amp supply at 230 volts gives you about 3.6 kilowatts. A typical immersion heater pulls 1 to 2 kilowatts, a small fan heater the same, a kettle around 2. Run two of those together and the breaker pops. The fix is discipline, not more amps: heat water, then make tea, then charge.
Paying for power, and the token economy
In northern France and on the Atlantic coast, smaller and municipal ports often meter electricity through a coin or token (jeton) system, or a prepaid card you buy at the capitainerie. You feed the bollard, you get a fixed block of power or a set number of hours. When it runs out, it just stops, usually at the least convenient moment.
Larger marinas, and most of the bigger Mediterranean ports, fold electricity and water into the nightly berth fee, or meter it digitally against your berth booking. The 2025-2026 visitor rate for a 12 metre boat runs roughly 30 to 100 euros a night in low season and 50 to 150 in high season, and whether power is included or extra varies port to port, so ask when you check in rather than assuming. If you want the wider picture on what a berth costs, I have gone through the numbers in my piece on the real cost of a French marina per night.
My habit now: the moment I am tied up, I walk to the capitainerie and ask three questions. Is electricity included or metered? Do I need a token or a card? What is the code for the showers? Five minutes there saves an evening of swearing at a bollard.
Water on the pontoon
Fresh water is almost always available at the berth, usually from the same bollard as the power or a nearby standpipe. The fittings are where it gets fiddly. France leans on the Gardena style quick-connect hose fittings rather than a screw thread, and the standpipe tap thread is not standardised across ports. I carry a short hose, a Gardena connector kit and a couple of thread adaptors. Without them you will be holding a hose against a tap by hand, which I have done, in the rain, more than once.
In some ports, particularly municipal harbours and on the canals, water is also tokened or timed, so the tap runs for a fixed period then shuts off. Fill your tanks when you arrive rather than the morning you leave, because a token machine that is out of order at 0700 will ruin your departure.
Water quality on French pontoons is potable and perfectly drinkable. I still run it through the boat's filter out of habit, but I have never had a problem in years of cruising the coast.
Showers, codes and the lunch-hour trap
The sanitaires, the shower and toilet block, are the part visitors most often get wrong. Access is rarely just an open door. Bigger marinas in Sete, Cap d'Agde and across the Riviera secure their blocks 24 hours a day with a badge, a key or a digital code that you only get when you check in and pay. Turn up after the office shuts and you may be stuck with the cockpit bucket until morning.
The code or badge usually comes with your berth, so this comes back to checking in promptly. The standard of the blocks varies enormously. The big modern marinas have hotel-grade showers; a small fishing harbour might give you two cubicles and a temperamental boiler shared with the entire visitor pontoon. In high season, shower early or shower late, because between 1800 and 2000 you will queue.
One genuinely French detail: the capitainerie, and sometimes the sanitaires, can close for lunch, often 1200 to 1400. The harbour staff are not being difficult, it is simply how the day runs here. Plan your arrival, your payment and your shower around it, and you will never be caught out. Hailing the capitainerie on VHF channel 9 as you approach lets them tell you a free berth and saves you nosing down a full pontoon.
Wifi, gas and the rest of the shore connection
Power, water and showers are the headline three, but a few smaller services trip up visitors in the same way.
Wifi is offered by most marinas of any size, usually free with your berth, sometimes through a code printed on your receipt. Reliability ranges from genuinely useful to barely there, and it weakens the further your berth is from the office. If you depend on a connection for weather routing or work, treat marina wifi as a bonus rather than a plan, and carry a French data SIM as backup.
Gas is the other quiet headache. France runs on its own bottle fittings, and the camping-style Camping Gaz bottles common here will not fit a British or Dutch regulator without an adaptor, while the larger French refillable bottles use different connections again. If you cruise on bottled gas, carry the adaptors for the French fittings, or fit a system that takes the local bottles, because running dry mid-cruise and finding nothing aboard connects is a thoroughly avoidable problem.
Ice, a small but real cruising currency in summer, is usually sold at the capitainerie or a nearby shop rather than dispensed on the pontoon. Ask when you check in. The pattern, by now familiar, is that the office is the answer to almost every shore-side question.
What to carry
After a few seasons my standard kit lives in one bag: a 16 to 32 amp shore power adaptor and the reverse, a 10 to 15 metre extension lead, a short potable hose with Gardena fittings and two tap thread adaptors, a handful of one and two euro coins for token machines, and a small dry bag for the shower run. That bag has paid for itself a hundred times over.
The bigger lesson is cultural. French ports assume you will introduce yourself at the capitainerie, that you understand prices and access are sorted there, and that the harbour runs on its own rhythm including lunch. Lean into that and the practical side of marina life becomes easy. While you are getting to grips with how a port works here, it is worth reading up on tipping and etiquette at the capitainerie so you do not start off on the wrong foot, and if you plan to deal with the inevitable broken fitting yourself, my notes on chandlers and boat repairs in France for the visitor will point you at the right shop.
