A night passage along the French coast is one of the genuine pleasures of cruising here. The traffic thins, the wind often steadies after dark, and a dawn landfall on the Brittany granite or the approach into the Gironde is a thing you remember for years. It is also when small equipment failures turn into large problems, because everything is harder in the dark and help is further away. The kit you carry for a night leg is not about gadgets, it is about keeping the boat visible, keeping the crew attached to it, and keeping a line open to the coast.
What follows is what I actually rig for a night passage, organised by the job each item does. Much of it overlaps with what France legally requires under Division 240, the regulation that applies to all boats under 24 metres in French waters whatever flag they fly, so getting it right keeps you both safe and compliant.
Lights: be seen, and see your own boat
Your navigation lights are the most basic night equipment and they are a legal requirement, so this is the one to check before you leave the berth, not at dusk offshore. Switch them all on at the dock and walk round confirming each one burns: the masthead tricolour or the separate sidelights and sternlight, and crucially that you are not showing both at once, which is a meaningful error other vessels misread.
Carry spare bulbs, or if you have LED units, know that a failed LED unit usually means replacing the whole fitting, so carry a backup plan: a battery-powered all-round white light you can hoist or hold is cheap insurance and satisfies your duty to show a light if the primary system dies. I also keep a powerful handheld torch in the cockpit, not for navigation but for lighting a sail, a buoy, or yourself to a closing vessel at the last moment.
The other lights that matter at night are the ones you do not show until needed: flares. Division 240 requires pyrotechnics for the semi-offshore and offshore zones, and at night a red parachute flare or a handheld red is what turns a position report into a thing a lifeboat crew can actually see. Check the expiry dates; flares are typically in date for around three years from manufacture and an out-of-date flare is both useless and a disposal headache.
Stay attached: lifejackets and harnesses
Going over the side at night, unseen, is the scenario that kills cruising sailors. The whole philosophy of night-passage safety is to make it impossible. That means lifejackets worn, not stowed, and harnesses clipped on.
France requires a lifejacket or buoyancy aid for every person aboard, compliant with the EN ISO 12402 standard, and for offshore work the expectation rises to a proper lifejacket with adequate buoyancy rather than a minimal aid. For a night passage I want every adult in an automatic-inflation lifejacket with a crotch strap, a light, and a harness built in. Add a personal locator beacon clipped to the jacket and you have given a lone casualty a fighting chance; the EPIRB and PLB registration for visiting boats piece covers getting that beacon registered so it actually identifies you when it fires.
The harness is only as good as what it clips to. Rig jackstrong points or webbing jackstays running bow to stern down each side deck, and fit a strong clip point in the cockpit so the on-watch crew can be attached before they leave the companionway. The rule on my boat after dark is simple and not negotiable: clipped on before you come out of the hatch, stay clipped on, and nobody goes forward alone without telling the helm. A man-overboard recovery is brutally hard in daylight and far worse at night, which the man overboard in tidal waters drills article spells out, so the entire strategy is to never test it.
Keep talking: VHF, AIS and the means to call
A DSC VHF set is the backbone of your night communications, and it needs to be more than installed, it needs to be set up. That means a programmed MMSI and a GPS feed so the distress button actually sends your position. Division 240 requires a means of calling for help appropriate to the zone, and a fixed DSC VHF with a masthead aerial is the realistic answer for coastal night passages. The whole point at night is that you may need to raise CROSS, the French coastguard, who monitor VHF 16 and DSC channel 70 around the clock from centres covering the entire coast, and the procedure for that is in the French distress and safety call procedure article. Have the mayday script taped by the radio where the on-watch crew can reach it.
AIS earns its place at night more than at any other time. A receiver shows you the big ships before you can make sense of their lights; a transponder makes those ships see you, which off a busy stretch like the approaches to the Channel ports is worth a great deal. A ship's watchkeeper who has you as a named target on screen behaves very differently from one who has not noticed a small white light among the shore lights.
See in the dark, and find the boat in the dark
Two practical items repay their cost on every night sail. First, red interior lighting at the chart table and in the cockpit, so you can read a chart or a plotter without wrecking the night vision you need to spot an unlit buoy. White cabin light spilling into the cockpit blinds the helm for a quarter of an hour; a red headtorch on each crewmember solves it.
Second, a charted, current set of charts you can actually read at night. France legally requires up-to-date official charts aboard, the detail of which is in the carrying an updated chart legal requirement article, and at night the up-to-date part bites harder, because you are relying on the chart to tell you a light's characteristics and an unlit hazard's position when you cannot eyeball anything. Cross-check every lit mark you expect to see against its charted light character: a Fl(2) 10s that you can count off against your watch is one of the great reassurances of night pilotage.
Power, water, warmth, and the watch
The last layer is the unglamorous stuff that keeps the crew functioning. Confirm the batteries will carry the nav lights, the plotter, the VHF and the autopilot through the night with margin, because a flat battery at 0300 takes out your lights and your radio at once. Have hot drinks in a flask, because cold degrades judgement faster than tiredness does, and the night watch is when judgement matters. Set a watch system before dark, brief it, and make sure whoever is on deck knows exactly how to wake the skipper, find channel 16, and read the position off the plotter.
None of this is exotic. A night passage on the French coast asks for the ordinary safety kit, properly checked, plus the discipline to wear it and stay clipped on. Get the lights confirmed, the crew attached, the radio set up and the charts current before you slip the lines at dusk, and the night becomes the best part of the trip rather than the part you survive.
