Between the Vilaine and the Loire there is a string of small harbours that most cruising guides cover in a line each, then move on. I think that does them a disservice. Piriac, La Turballe and Le Pouliguen sit within a short hop of each other along the same stretch of Loire-Atlantique coast, and each one solves the visiting boater's problem in a different way. One has a gate, one is wide open, one dries. Knowing which is which saves you a frustrating afternoon hanging off a wall.
I worked along this coast over three days one June, taking a harbour a night, and came away with strong opinions about all three.
Piriac-sur-Mer: the gate that catches people out
Piriac is the prettiest of the trio, a fishing village turned summer resort tucked under a small headland at the western end of the coast. The catch is the tidal gate. The floating basin behind it stays full only because a tilting sill holds the water in, and that sill covers at roughly 2.20 metres on the chart datum. Below that height the gate is effectively shut to deeper boats.
The marina runs to about 830 resident berths with around 50 kept for visitors, and you raise the harbour office on VHF channel 9 as you approach. The signal system is worth memorising before you arrive: three white flags by day mean the gate is open, three red flags mean it is closed. At night the same is shown in lights. Get there outside the access window and you wait in the outer harbour, which is fine in settled weather and tiresome in a swell.
So Piriac rewards planning. Work out the height of tide for your arrival, check it clears the sill with your draft plus a comfortable margin, and time your run accordingly. Get it right and you tie up in a snug, full basin in one of the most photogenic villages on the coast. Get it wrong and you are loitering offshore watching the flags.
La Turballe: the one you can always get into
A few miles south, La Turballe is the opposite proposition. It is first and foremost a working fishing port, one of the busier ones on the south Brittany coast, and the marina shares the water with the trawler fleet. The great virtue for a tired visitor is that access is open at all states of the tide. No gate, no sill, no waiting on a height of water.
The marina is modest, around 364 berths in total with roughly 35 for visitors, so in high season it fills and the visitor pontoon ends up rafted several boats deep. You call channel 9 on the way in to be allocated a spot, and you may well find yourself climbing over a neighbour to reach the pontoon. That is the trade for the all-tide access. As a bolthole when the weather turns or the tide is wrong for the gated harbours either side, La Turballe earns its keep precisely because you can always get in.
It is also a genuinely useful provisioning stop. The fish, unsurprisingly, is excellent and cheap straight off the quay, the town behind has proper supermarkets, and the sardine canneries that made the place still run. If your cruise is the kind that involves cooking aboard rather than eating out every night, this is where you stock the cool box.
Le Pouliguen: drying out at the western end of La Baule bay
Round the next headland the coast opens into the great curving bay of La Baule, and at its western corner sits Le Pouliguen, sharing a tidal river entrance with the resort of La Baule itself. This is the most demanding of the three for a deep-keeled visitor, because the basin partly dries and the entrance carries limited water.
The access threshold sits at around 1.60 metres above chart datum, and the working window is roughly mid-tide and above: figure on the basin being usable from about two and a half hours before high water to two and a half hours after, with the least water at the edges of that. There are around 30 visitor berths, and again you call the harbour masters on VHF channel 9 on arrival. Shallow-draft and lifting-keel boats have the easiest time here; if you draw two metres you want the tide well up and you want to have done your sums.
The reward is a prettier, more intimate spot than the big modern marina of Pornichet across the bay, with the resort town and that enormous beach a short walk away. For the wider picture of the bay and the estuary beyond it, our guide to Pornichet, La Baule and the Loire estuary covers how the three harbours of the bay fit together and the bridge clearance round the corner.
The coast between them
The short hops between these three harbours are not just transit; the coast itself is worth slowing down for. West of Piriac the rocky Cote Sauvage of the Croisic peninsula runs out towards the Plateau du Four, with its tall black-and-white lighthouse marking the offshore dangers. Between La Turballe and Le Pouliguen lie the Guerande salt marshes, a vast expanse of shallow pans where the famous fleur de sel is still raked by hand, and behind them the medieval walled town of Guerande sits a short bus or bike ride inland from any of the harbours.
Le Croisic itself, just south of La Turballe, has a tidal harbour worth a look if your draft and the height of tide allow, a working fishing port with a pretty old town that sees fewer visiting yachts than it deserves. The whole peninsula is low and the approaches are studded with rocks and banks, so it is country you read off the chart rather than eyeball, but in settled weather it makes a fine day's pottering between the overnight stops.
What strikes you, working this coast slowly, is how much variety is packed into a few miles. A rocky resort village, a busy fishing port, a drying river mouth under a grand seaside town, and salt marshes full of wading birds, all within an afternoon's sail of one another. Most cruisers blast through in a single passage between the Vilaine and the Loire. The harbours reward the boat that stops.
Choosing your harbour for the night
If I had to reduce three days of pottering to a single rule, it would be this: La Turballe is the safe default because you can always get in, Piriac is the one to plan for when the tide and weather line up, and Le Pouliguen suits a shallow boat and a high tide. The distances between them are short, an hour or two of motoring in calm conditions, so you can keep options open and divert if a gate beats you.
A few practical notes from the three nights:
- All three monitor VHF channel 9; have the height of tide worked out before you call.
- Piriac and Le Pouliguen are gate and sill harbours; arrive inside the access window or be ready to wait.
- La Turballe rafts in summer, so rig fenders both sides and accept the climb across.
- Off-lying rocks and banks mark this coast; it is a chart-and-pilot approach, not point-and-go.
- The Plateau de la Banche and other dangers off La Baule bay are buoyed but unforgiving in poor visibility.
This little coast is the natural stepping stone between the still water of the Arzal lock and the Vilaine to the north and the working Loire estuary to the south, with Pornic and the Baie de Bourgneuf the next decent harbour beyond the river mouth. Treated as somewhere to linger rather than tick off in a line, the trio of Piriac, La Turballe and Le Pouliguen gives a visiting boat three very different nights within sight of one another, which is more than most short stretches of coast manage.
