An outboard is the part of your tender that does the work, costs the most, and is the easiest thing on the whole boat to steal. Get the size wrong and you cannot lift it or it cannot push you home against the chop. Leave it unlocked in a French marina and it can be gone in under two minutes. Two seasons of cruising France taught me to take both problems seriously, and they turn out to be linked: the bigger the engine, the more tempting it is to a thief and the harder it is to lift off and lock up at night.
How much horsepower do you really need
Start by being honest about the job. For a 2.5 to 3 metre tender carrying two adults and the shopping from an anchorage to a slipway, you do not need much. The choice usually comes down to three bands.
- 2.3 to 3.5 hp. Single cylinder, integral or tiny external tank, displacement speed only. Light enough to carry in one hand, fine for short hops in sheltered water. Will not plane and will struggle against a stiff Mediterranean breeze with two aboard.
- 4 to 6 hp. The cruising sweet spot. Enough to get a loaded RIB onto the plane with one person, or push it steadily against wind and chop with two. This is what most cruisers settle on.
- 8 to 15 hp. Proper planing performance with a full load, but a real lump to lift and a far bigger theft target. Overkill unless you have a heavy RIB and davits.
Here is the detail that surprised me: in most engine families the 4 hp is mechanically the same block as the 6 hp, just with a restricted carburettor to drop the power. They weigh almost the same, so buying the 4 hp saves you nothing in weight and costs you the extra power for nothing. If you are choosing between them, take the 6.
Weight is the number that runs your life
You will lift this engine on and off the tender, on and off the pushpit rail, and sometimes up onto the side deck, every single day at anchor. The weight decides whether that is a chore or an injury.
The numbers are worth knowing before you buy:
- A 2.5 hp can be as light as 13 to 14 kg, a genuine one-hand carry.
- The lightest 4 to 5 hp four-strokes sit around 17 to 20 kg.
- A 6 hp jumps to roughly 27 kg and up, because most are twins. That is a two-hand lift onto a pitching pushpit and the point where many cruisers fit a rail bracket and stop carrying it about.
Remember the four-stroke versus two-stroke gap too: a four-stroke often weighs close to double the equivalent two-stroke. New engines sold in France are four-strokes for emissions reasons, so plan around four-stroke weights. For us, the 6 hp four-stroke at the high end of that range is right at the limit of what we will happily lift, and it shapes how we stow and lock it.
This is also why the tender and the engine have to be chosen together rather than separately. I have set out the dinghy side of that decision in the guide to choosing a tender for the French canals and coast, and the two pieces are meant to be read as a pair.
Theft is not a maybe, it is a when
French marinas are mostly safe, but outboard theft is real and depressingly efficient. Across marine theft generally, outboards make up the large majority of what gets stolen, and an unsecured engine can be off a transom in under two minutes by someone who does it for a living. Popular sizes are the target, the 6 to 15 hp range that is light enough to grab and valuable enough to sell.
The risk peaks exactly where you relax: a busy marina in August, the tender left on its davits or tied to a pontoon overnight, the engine still clamped on. A dinghy pulled up an isolated slipway while you walk into town is the other classic.
Two locks, not one
The thieves' method is to undo the clamp screws or cut a single cable, so the answer is two independent locking points. Defeat one and the engine is still held.
My setup, which most cruisers converge on, is this:
- A clamp lock or locking nut that replaces the clamp screws or a mounting nut, so the engine cannot simply be unclamped. Insurers usually require a proprietary lock of this kind; a padlock through the clamps does not count.
- A steel security cable run through the engine's lifting eye and around a strong point on the tender or pontoon, then locked. A cut here still leaves the clamp lock holding.
A clamp lock costs roughly 30 to 60 euros, a decent cable lock similar, so for under a hundred euros you have two barriers. Against a thief who works in two-minute windows, two locks that each take time to defeat are usually enough to send him to the next, unlocked, dinghy.
The habits that matter more than the hardware
Locks slow a thief down; behaviour keeps you off his list entirely.
- Lift the engine off and stow it below at night when you can. An engine in the cockpit locker is not on the marina's shopping list.
- Bring the tender alongside or onto davits in the marina rather than leaving it loose on a pontoon.
- Mark the engine. A discreetly painted or engraved identifier, and a photo of the serial number kept on your phone, helps recovery and deters the casual thief.
- Note the cover-of-darkness pattern. Most tender thefts happen overnight in crowded harbours, so that is when the locks earn their keep.
The wider point is that your tender and outboard are the bit of the boat most exposed to other people, in a way the anchor on your bow never is. When you are berthed stern-to in a Provence marina using the lazy-line system, the tender hangs off the back in plain view of the whole quay. Lock it as if it will be tested, because in August it probably will be.
Fuel, registration and the French detail
A couple of French-specific points catch visitors out, and they are worth knowing before you arrive rather than at the fuel berth.
Petrol for the outboard is your problem to solve, because France makes you buy it from a road filling station in a can rather than from most marina fuel berths, which sell diesel. A small portable engine sips fuel, so a single five or ten litre can lasts weeks, but you do need to carry it and refill it ashore. Keep the can secured and vented, never below in a closed locker, and label it so nobody mistakes it for water.
If your outboard is fitted to a tender that is itself a registered craft, the registration rules can apply, and the threshold that matters is power. France has historically required registration once the engine reaches a certain power, so a small tender outboard usually sits below the line while a larger one may not. The detail sits inside the broader picture of French rules for foreign-flagged boats, and it is worth a glance before you fit anything powerful to the dinghy.
Finally, keep the engine serviced. A four-stroke that has sat over a French winter wants fresh fuel, a clean carburettor and the gearbox oil checked before the season, and the day it refuses to start is always the day you are furthest from the slipway.
What I run
A 6 hp four-stroke on a 2.7 metre RIB, a locking nut on the transom mount, a steel cable through the lifting eye to a pushpit strongpoint, and the engine lifted into a locker most nights in busy ports. It is the right size to push us home against a chop, just within lifting range, and locked well enough that in two seasons of French marinas it has never tempted anyone. That is the whole goal: an engine big enough to be useful and locked tightly enough to stay yours.
