Cruise the French coast for a season and sooner or later you share water with a warship. Two places make it a near certainty: the approaches to Brest in the Atlantic, and the Rade de Toulon on the Mediterranean. Both are working naval ports on a scale that surprises visitors, and both have rules that a foreign yacht is expected to know without being told. Get it wrong and you will meet a grey patrol boat with a loudhailer and a crew that has done this a thousand times.
Toulon: the biggest base in France
Since the first of January 2011 the Toulon arsenal has been France's largest defence base. More than 60 per cent of the French Navy's tonnage is home-ported here, including the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and the bulk of the Mediterranean fleet. The Rade de Toulon is split into the petite rade, closer to the town, and the grande rade outside, and the naval port occupies a huge slice of the western shore.
What this means for you is straightforward. Large parts of the rade are restricted or prohibited to pleasure craft, marked on the chart and on the water by yellow special-mark buoys. The military zone is patrolled. If a warship is moving, a security perimeter moves with it, and you are expected to stay well outside it. The simplest discipline is to keep to the buoyed channels for civilian traffic, monitor VHF 16, and if in any doubt give the grey hulls a berth you would be embarrassed to be asked about. Toulon's marinas (the Vieille Darse and the marina at the eastern end) sit clear of the naval area, but the approach takes you past it.
If your route runs along this coast, the way the navy shapes the water around Toulon is worth folding into your wider plan for the Toulon petite rade for visitors and the run east toward the islands.
Brest: the goulet and the bombers
The Atlantic equivalent is Brest, the second French naval base after Toulon and ahead of Cherbourg. The Arsenal de Brest sits up the river Penfeld, and the whole anchorage is reached through a narrow goulet, a natural defile barely a mile wide that funnels every ship, naval or civilian, into the rade.
The detail that changes how you behave is on the south side of the rade: the Ile Longue submarine base, opened in 1972, home to France's four Triomphant-class ballistic-missile submarines. These boats carry the nation's nuclear deterrent, the Force Oceanique Strategique, and the area around Ile Longue is a permanent prohibited zone. There is no casual sailing past it, no anchoring to admire the view, no drifting in for a photograph. When a submarine moves through the goulet it does so inside an escorted bubble, and the perimeter is enforced by patrol craft that will intercept long before you become a real problem.
Cruising into Brest as a visitor is perfectly normal and welcome; the Marina du Chateau and Moulin Blanc are friendly and central. You simply route through the goulet on the civilian side, keep clear of the southern shore, and treat any naval movement as something that takes priority over your schedule. The Rade de Brest is genuinely beautiful once you are in, and I cover the practical side of arriving in my guide to the Brest rade for visitors.
What the restricted areas look like, and how to read them
French naval zones come in two flavours and the chart distinguishes them clearly.
- Prohibited zones (zone interdite): no entry at any time, full stop. Ile Longue is the obvious example. These are charted with a hatched magenta boundary and labelled.
- Restricted or regulated zones (zone reglementee): entry controlled, often suspended during exercises or ship movements, sometimes open at other times. These are the ones that catch people out, because they look passable on a quiet day.
Both kinds are reinforced by AAP buoys (the yellow special marks) on the water. If you see a line of yellow buoys you cannot account for, assume there is a reason and stay outside it.
Firing ranges and exercise areas
Naval activity is not confined to the harbours. Both coasts carry military firing zones offshore where live gunnery, missile trials and exercises take place, and these are activated and deactivated by notice. They are charted, and their status is broadcast. The mistake visitors make is assuming a charted firing area is always hot or always cold; it is neither, it depends on the day. Before a coastal passage near Brest or along the Var coast, check the current notices. My separate piece on military firing zones off France walks through where they are and how to find out whether they are live before you sail across one.
A few minutes that save a lot of bother
The single most useful thing you can do before a passage near either base is spend five minutes on the current notices to mariners and the local broadcasts. Restricted zones get activated for exercises and ship movements, firing ranges go hot and cold, and a perimeter that was open last week may be closed today. The visitor who plans on last year's almanac and a quiet memory of the chart is the one who ends up explaining themselves to a patrol crew. The information is published and free; the embarrassment of being turned back, or worse, is entirely avoidable.
It also pays to time your transit sensibly. Naval movements cluster around weekdays and working hours, so a quiet weekend dawn through the Goulet de Brest is a calmer affair than a Tuesday mid-morning when half the fleet seems to be exercising. You cannot plan around the navy precisely, because their schedule is not yours to see, but you can avoid sailing blind into the busiest windows.
VHF, AIS and plain courtesy
The navy monitors VHF 16 like everyone else, and a warship under way will often transmit on AIS, though not always, and a submarine on the surface may show nothing useful at all. The working assumption near either base is that you watch and listen rather than expecting to be warned.
A few habits that have kept me out of trouble:
- Have channel 16 live whenever you are within a few miles of Brest or Toulon, and answer promptly if a patrol craft calls you.
- If a grey hull is moving, alter early and obviously so your intention is unmistakable, the same right-angle thinking you would use crossing the shipping lanes off Ushant and the Casquets.
- Never anchor or loiter near a buoyed military line to wait out weather. Find a proper anchorage.
- If a patrol boat directs you, do what it says immediately and ask questions later. They are not negotiating.
The bigger picture for the visiting cruiser
Naval traffic is part of a wider mix of professional water-users you share French approaches with, from container ships to fast ferries. The mindset is the same throughout: you are the small, slow, manoeuvrable vessel, and your job is to be predictable and to keep clear. The navy adds one extra ingredient, the security perimeter, which is non-negotiable in a way a merchant captain's preference is not.
None of this should put you off. Brest and Toulon are two of the most rewarding ports on the French coast, full of maritime history and surprisingly easy for a yacht once you understand the geography. The naval presence is simply a fact of the water you are passing through. Respect the prohibited zones, watch the patrol craft, keep 16 up, and you will find the French Navy entirely indifferent to a well-behaved foreign yacht going quietly about its business.
