The first time a ship genuinely frightened me was off the Cotentin at two in the morning. A cluster of white lights had sat on the same bearing for ten minutes, which is the one thing a sailor never wants to see, and I had convinced myself it was a fishing boat working a slow box. It was a coaster doing fourteen knots straight at us. We tacked, it passed half a mile clear, and I spent the rest of the watch furious at how close I had let it get by misreading a few lamps in the dark.
That is the heart of night collision avoidance. It is not about heroics, it is about reading lights correctly and acting early. The French coast adds its own pressures: dense ferry routes, big trawler fleets that ignore your right of way, and traffic separation schemes that funnel everything afloat into the same few miles of water.
Read the lights before you read the radar
The international rules of the road (the COLREGs) set the whole framework, and France applies them exactly as the UK does. Rule 20 says lights run from sunset to sunrise and in any restricted visibility, fog or heavy rain included, even in daylight. There is no French exception, no local fudge.
What changes by night is your information. You lose the hull, the rig, the bow wave. You have coloured lamps and their arrangement, and that is the language you must be fluent in.
The visibility ranges built into Rule 22 tell you how far off you should expect to see something. A vessel over 50 metres shows a masthead light visible at 6 nautical miles, its sidelights and sternlight at 3. A boat between 12 and 50 metres shows a masthead at 5 miles (3 miles if under 20 metres) and the rest at 2. Your own little ship under 12 metres need only show lights visible at 2 miles, sidelights at 1. So the maths is brutal: a ship can see you barely a mile off while you see it at six. You are almost always the one who must give way in practice, whatever the rule book says about who is stand-on.
A few light patterns are worth burning into memory because they recur constantly off France:
- Two white masthead lights, the after one higher, means a power-driven vessel over 50 metres. The vertical gap and which is higher tells you its aspect.
- A green over white pair shows a vessel trawling. They turn unpredictably, tow long warps, and frequently do not keep watch on you.
- Red over red, "red over red, the skipper is dead", marks a vessel not under command. Stay well clear.
- A single steady light low to the water that you cannot resolve into a pattern is often a small fishing boat or a moored craft. Treat it as a hazard until proven otherwise.
The traps off France after dark
Ferries are the big one. The Channel ports, Calais, Dunkerque, Cherbourg, Roscoff, Saint-Malo, all pump out high-speed craft and conventional ferries on tight schedules. A fast ferry closing at 25 knots eats a mile every two and a half minutes. If you spot one at three miles you have under eight minutes, and your alteration must be obvious from her bridge, not a gentle ten degrees she will never notice.
Trawler fleets are the second trap, especially in the Bay of Biscay and off south Brittany. They work in clusters, lit up like a town, and a green-over-white trawling vessel has limited ability to manoeuvre when its gear is down. Do not assume one will give way just because you are under sail. Plot a course around the whole fleet rather than threading it.
Third, the traffic separation schemes. The Dover Strait is the busiest in the world, and the Casquets and Ushant schemes off the Channel Islands and western Brittany carry constant heavy shipping. Cross a lane on a heading as near 90 degrees to the traffic flow as you can manage, do it promptly, and never loiter. If you are unsure how the inshore zones and reporting work, read up on the commercial shipping in French approaches before you go near them.
AIS helps, then it lies to you
I would not cross the Channel at night now without an AIS receiver, ideally a transponder so the big ships see me too. Seeing a name, a CPA and a TCPA on the plotter takes a lot of the guesswork out of that "is it on a steady bearing" question.
But AIS has gaps that bite at night. Small fishing boats often carry nothing. Some switch off near fishing grounds. The data updates on intervals, so a fast-manoeuvring vessel can be reported on an old heading. And there is a nasty habit of staring at the screen instead of out of the window. The lights are the truth; AIS is a useful hint. When the two disagree, believe your eyes and the bearing.
If a contact worries you, the cleanest fix is to talk. A short call on VHF 16, "ship in position [X], this is the yacht on your port bow, do you see me, over", resolves more close encounters than any clever helm work. If you are unsure of the protocol or the channels the French coastguard monitors, the guide to contacting the French coastguard on VHF covers who is listening and where. Should it ever escalate, knowing the distress and safety call procedure in France cold means you are not fumbling with the radio while a bow looms.
Watchkeeping that actually works
The collision I nearly had came from a lazy watch, not a missing rule. A proper night watch is a discipline:
- Take a compass bearing of any light that appears, then take it again two or three minutes later. Constant bearing, decreasing range is the collision signature. Burn that phrase in.
- Scan in sectors, sweep the whole horizon every few minutes, do not lock onto the interesting light and lose the quiet one creeping up astern.
- Protect your night vision. Red instruments, dimmed plotter, no white torches in the cockpit. It takes 20 minutes to recover full dark adaption and one careless cabin light to wreck it.
- Keep watches short. Two hours is plenty when you are tired. A fresh pair of eyes beats an exhausted veteran every time.
I also rig everything I might need before dark while my hands are warm and my brain works: torch clipped on, harness on in any sea, the radio mic where I can reach it, a paper note of the relevant CROSS and the nearest port. Sorting your night sailing equipment for the French coast at dusk, not at midnight in a squall, is half the battle.
One more habit worth keeping is a plan for the moment a contact will not resolve. If a steady bearing persists and the other vessel shows no sign of altering, do not wait politely for the rules to be honoured. Make a bold, early, obvious change of course, ideally a substantial alteration to starboard that shows the other bridge a clear new aspect, and do it while you still have sea room. A small yacht that turns hard and early is far safer than one that holds its rights into a converging bow. The rules decide who pays afterwards; they do not stop steel.
The honest summary
Most collisions near misses I have had came down to seeing something late or reading it wrong, never to the rules being ambiguous. Off France the volume of traffic simply punishes that harder. Learn the light patterns until they are automatic, take real bearings rather than eyeballing, treat AIS as an assistant and not an oracle, and talk to anything that worries you. Do those four things and the French coast at night becomes one of the great pleasures of cruising rather than the thing that keeps you below pretending to sleep.
