The bay of La Baule is one of those places the French keep slightly to themselves. Ask a British sailor where to cruise on the Atlantic coast and you will hear about Brittany and you will hear about La Rochelle, but the great curving sweep of sand between the Loire and the Vilaine, with its belle-epoque villas and its three working harbours, rarely gets a mention. It should. This is the doorstep to the Loire, the gateway between south Brittany and the Vendee, and a comfortable cruising ground in its own right.
I came into this bay from the west after working down through south Brittany, and the change of character is abrupt. The rock and tide of the Morbihan give way to a long shallow bay, a grand resort skyline, and the industrial muscle of Saint-Nazaire just round the corner. It is an unusual mix, and it makes for an interesting few days.
Three harbours in one bay
The bay offers a choice. Pornichet, at the eastern end nearest the Loire, is the big modern marina: around 1,150 berths afloat with roughly 150 kept for visitors, open 24 hours a day, with the harbour office on VHF channel 9. You call channel 9 on the way in and they allocate a berth. Water and electricity are on the pontoons and there is a fuel service, so it is the natural all-weather base for the bay.
At the western end, the twin towns of Le Pouliguen and La Baule share a tidal harbour up a narrow entrance, with the visitor berths reached past a marked channel. It is a prettier, more intimate spot than Pornichet, but it dries in part and the entrance carries less water, so it suits shallower craft and careful tidal timing. There are around 30 visitor berths there and, again, you raise the harbour masters on channel 9.
La Baule itself, the resort, sits behind the beach between the two harbours, all promenade and grand hotels. The town grew up in the late nineteenth century as the railway brought Parisians to the seaside, and the architecture still shows it. The beach is one of the longest in Europe, a continuous arc of sand running for several kilometres, and from the water the line of villas and apartment blocks behind it is unmistakable, a useful landmark when you are closing the bay from seaward.
Pornichet has the additional advantage of running events of its own. The marina hosts regattas and the bay sees a lot of dinghy and small-keelboat activity in summer, so on a fine weekend the water inshore can be busy with racing fleets. Keep an eye out for committee boats and starting lines if you are crossing the bay, and give the racing room rather than barging through a start.
The thing you cannot miss: the Saint-Nazaire bridge
Round the eastern corner of the bay the Loire opens out, and the first thing you see is the great cable-stayed Saint-Nazaire bridge leaping the river mouth. It is one of the largest bridges of its type in Europe, stretching some 3,356 metres across, and it gives a clearance of about 61 metres above chart datum at its centre span. No cruising yacht will ever trouble it, but it is the landmark that orients the whole estuary, visible for miles.
Saint-Nazaire below the bridge is a serious commercial and shipbuilding port, the yard where the largest cruise liners in the world are built. That is the first thing to understand about the Loire estuary: it is a working waterway, full of ship traffic, and a small yacht is the lowest of the low in the pecking order. Keep clear of the buoyed shipping channel, monitor the port VHF, and treat the big ships as having absolute right of way, because in practice they do.
Up the Loire, and the limits of it
The Loire is navigable as a tidal river up towards Nantes, but it is not the gentle wine-country cruise the name might suggest. The estuary is heavily commercial, the tidal streams are strong, and the upper reaches silt and shoal. Most visiting yachts that go up do so to reach Nantes and then step the mast for the canals, because the Loire connects, via the Nantes to Brest canal and the inland network, to the cross-country routes. If that is your plan, our overview of air draft on the French canals explains why the mast has to come down before you go far inland.
For most cruisers, though, the estuary is something you observe rather than enter deeply. Take the boat far enough up to see the bridge and the shipyards from the water, then drop back down to the clean berths of Pornichet rather than fighting the commercial river for a marginal anchorage.
There is a real working hazard in the lower estuary worth spelling out. The Loire approaches carry large bulk carriers, gas tankers and the vast hulls under tow to and from the Saint-Nazaire shipyard, and these ships are constrained to the dredged channel. A laden tanker cannot stop or turn aside for a yacht, and the wash off a big ship moving up the estuary can be unpleasant in the shallows. Cross the shipping channel at right angles, quickly, when it is clear, and never assume a ship has seen you. Monitoring the port traffic frequency tells you what is moving before you can see it round the bends.
Tides, approach and timing
This is shallow-bay sailing with a big tidal range, comfortably four metres or more on springs, so the height of tide governs almost everything. The bay itself dries over wide areas at low water, the harbour entrances at La Baule and Le Pouliguen need the tide under you, and even the approaches to Pornichet ask for sensible timing on a big spring low. Work out your tidal heights before you commit to a harbour, not after.
The approach from seaward is across relatively open water with off-lying rocks and banks marked by buoys, the Plateau de la Banche and others, so it is a chart-and-pilot approach rather than a point-and-go one. In settled weather it is easy. In a strong onshore blow the shallow bay kicks up an ugly short sea, and you will be glad of Pornichet's all-weather access.
Provisioning and life ashore
For all the grandeur of the resort, this is a practical place to spend a few days. Pornichet has the services a cruising boat needs: fuel on the marina, water and power on every pontoon, supermarkets and a market within reach, and chandlers for the inevitable broken fitting. The seafront restaurants run from cheap creperies to the kind of place that takes the bill seriously, and the long beach is genuinely good for swimming when the tide is up. Out of the high season the marina quietens right down and the town feels almost too big for the few people in it, which suits a sailor who has had enough of crowded anchorages.
A short hop west takes you to the wilder coast around Le Croisic and the Guerande salt marshes, where the famous fleur de sel is raked by hand from shallow pans. Le Croisic itself has a tidal harbour worth a look, and the medieval walled town of Guerande sits just inland, an easy bike ride or bus trip from La Baule. The bay rewards a boat that lingers rather than one that treats it as a single overnight on the way past.
Where it fits in a longer cruise
La Baule bay is the natural staging point between two very different cruising worlds. To the north and west lies south Brittany, the Morbihan and the islands; to the south the Vendee coast runs down past the Ile d'Yeu and Port-Joinville towards La Rochelle and eventually the Gironde estuary and Bordeaux. Pornichet makes a reliable hinge between the two, with the bonus of a grand seaside town to walk into when the weather pins you in.
Come in on channel 9, mind the height of tide, keep well clear of the ship channel under that vast bridge, and the bay of La Baule will repay the visit far better than its quiet reputation suggests.
