Here is the most useful thing I can tell a British sailor heading to France: you do not need to speak French. You need to try to. The gap between the visitor who attempts a clumsy bonjour and the one who opens with "do you speak English" is enormous, and it has almost nothing to do with grammar. It is about respect, and the French read it instantly.
I am not fluent. After five seasons I can hold a conversation at the marina bar and get laughed at gently for my accent, which is exactly the right outcome. What follows is the survival kit, the maybe forty words and phrases that turn a closed door into an open one, and a few hard-won notes on where the British go wrong.
The one rule that matters more than vocabulary
Say bonjour first. Always. Before you ask anything, before you point at the menu, before you hand over your passport at the capitainerie, you say bonjour. In France this is not a pleasantry, it is the social contract. Walking up to a counter and launching straight into a request, even a polite one in perfect French, marks you as rude. The bonjour is the knock on the door you have to make before you are allowed in.
I watched a fellow Brit get nowhere with a harbourmaster for ten minutes, then watched the same harbourmaster melt the moment a French boater walked up, said bonjour madame, and only then asked his question. The British sailor had skipped the knock. That is the whole lesson, and it costs you one word.
After dark or in the evening it becomes bonsoir. When you leave, au revoir. Thank you is merci, and merci beaucoup if you mean it. Please, the formal version you will use most, is s'il vous plait. With those five you can already be a polite human being in France.
The capitainerie phrases
The harbourmaster's office is where your French gets its first real test. The words you need:
- Avez-vous une place pour cette nuit? (Do you have a berth for tonight?)
- Pour un bateau de douze metres. (For a twelve-metre boat. Swap in your length.)
- Combien par nuit? (How much per night?)
- Ou sont les douches? (Where are the showers?)
- L'eau et l'electricite, c'est compris? (Are water and electricity included?)
The numbers matter because the answer to "combien" comes back in euros, fast. Marina nights for a 40-foot boat range from a modest 20 to 30 euros in a quiet Atlantic port to well over 100 euros in a fashionable Riviera marina in August, so make sure you have understood the figure before you take the berth. Learn your numbers to a hundred. It is the most practical French homework you will ever do.
VHF and the radio
On the water you will hail the marina or another boat on the radio. The convention on the French coast is to call on channel 9 as a working and hailing channel, keeping channel 16 clear for distress. The phrases are simple and you say them in a fixed order:
- Capitainerie de [port name], ici le voilier [boat name]. (Harbour office of X, this is the sailing yacht Y.)
- Demande une place pour la nuit. (Requesting a berth for the night.)
The French coastguard, CROSS, broadcasts and answers in French and English, and in a genuine emergency you can and should use English. But for the everyday business of asking for a berth, a few rehearsed French phrases mark you as a guest who made an effort, and they will switch to English readily once you have shown willing. My fuller list of VHF phrases in French covers the radio side in detail.
The marina bar and the apero
This is where the language stops being transactional and starts being social, and where the rewards are biggest. The early evening apero, the pre-dinner drink, is the heart of French boating sociability, on the coast and even more so on the canals.
You do not need much:
- Je peux vous offrir un verre? (Can I buy you a drink?)
- C'est de quel pays, votre bateau? (What country is your boat from?)
- On a mouille a [place] hier soir. (We anchored at X last night.)
- Vous connaissez un bon restaurant? (Do you know a good restaurant?)
The last one is gold. Ask a French sailor for a restaurant recommendation and you have handed them a small pleasure: being the local expert. The conversation runs from there. The whole social fabric of the anchorage, which I have described in meeting other cruisers in French anchorages, is built on exactly these small openers.
Where the British go wrong
A few patterns I see again and again.
Speaking louder. English does not become French at higher volume, and it makes you look like the parody. Lower your voice, slow down, and let the other person have time.
Apologising for your French in English. If you must apologise, do it in French: desole, mon francais est mauvais. It is charming. The English apology just resets you to tourist.
Using tu with strangers. French has a formal vous and an intimate tu, and a stranger, an official, an older person all get vous. Defaulting to vous is never wrong. Tu with the harbourmaster is a small rudeness you will not even notice you committed.
Giving up after one stumble. The French interlocutor who corrects your word is not being unkind, they are taking you seriously enough to teach you. Take the correction, repeat it, and carry on. That is how the marina-bar French actually gets learned, one corrected word at a time.
The chandlery and the boatyard
The harder French comes when something breaks, because now you need nouns you never learned in school. This is where a small printed glossary in the chart table earns its place, and where a few words save you an expensive misunderstanding.
The essentials at the chandlery, the shipchandler or accastillage:
- Je cherche... (I am looking for...) followed by pointing, which is entirely legitimate.
- Une manille (a shackle), un bout (a length of rope, pronounced "boo"), de l'antifouling, de la resine.
- Vous avez ca en stock? (Do you have this in stock?)
- C'est pour reparer le moteur. (It is to repair the engine.)
At the boatyard, the chantier, the stakes are higher because you are agreeing to work and cost. Get the key words straight: un devis is a written quote, and you ask for one before any work starts, every time. Combien de temps? is how long. Quand est-ce que ce sera pret? is when will it be ready. A yard that gives you a devis and a date in writing is a yard you can trust, and asking for both in French marks you as a customer who knows the drill rather than a tourist to be improvised at.
Even here, fluency is not the point. A pocket glossary, a willingness to point, and the patience to let the chandler correct your word will get the job done. The French tradesman, like the lock-keeper, responds to the effort.
How much to learn before you go
Be realistic. A formal Alliance Francaise beginner course, the gold standard, runs a group of you through several weeks and costs somewhere in the region of 150 to 600 euros depending on intensity and location, with beginners often starting the first Monday of the month. That is worth it if you are committing to a long stay or a liveaboard life.
For a two-week cruise, you do not need that. A free app for half an hour a day for a month gets you the numbers, the greetings, and a working pile of nouns. The most-used French phrases the apps drill into you, bonjour, s'il vous plait, merci, are precisely the ones that matter at the pontoon.
Aim for forty words and the nerve to use them badly. The grammar can come later, or never. What earns you a welcome in France is not correctness, it is the visible attempt. Knock on the door with a bonjour, butcher the next sentence cheerfully, and you will find the marina bar a far friendlier place than the sailor who waited for everyone to speak English. If you want a longer word list to take aboard, I keep one in 60 boating phrases in French.
