I grew up filing the old CG66 form and telling Solent Coastguard my plans before a Channel crossing, so the first time I cruised the French coast I assumed there would be an equivalent ritual at the other end. There mostly is not, and the difference catches a lot of UK boats out. France does not run a routine "tell us your passage plan and we'll watch over you" service the way British sailors expect. Understanding what the French system does and does not do is the difference between sensible safety and false reassurance.
The French coastguard is CROSS
France's coastguard function is run by the CROSS network: Centres Regionaux Operationnels de Surveillance et de Sauvetage. They are the people who coordinate search and rescue, monitor traffic, and broadcast weather and safety information. There are five main coastal stations and you should know which one covers your patch:
- CROSS Gris-Nez: the eastern Channel and Dover Strait, Belgian border down to Cap d'Antifer.
- CROSS Jobourg: the central Channel, Cap d'Antifer to Mont-Saint-Michel.
- CROSS Corsen: the western Channel, Mont-Saint-Michel to Penmarc'h.
- CROSS Etel: the Bay of Biscay, Penmarc'h to the Spanish border.
- CROSS La Garde (Mediterranee): the whole French Med coast.
Every CROSS keeps a continuous listening watch on VHF channel 16 (156.8 MHz) and on channel 70 for DSC. That is your route to them in an emergency, and it is the channel you monitor underway by law anyway.
What France does not do
Here is the mental adjustment. France does not expect you to phone in a passage plan before every trip, and there is no general obligation to report your departure and arrival to CROSS on a routine coastal hop. They are not running a nationwide flight-plan service for yachts. If you sail from one French port to the next and tell nobody, you have broken no rule.
What CROSS does broadcast, regularly and usefully, is safety information: AVURNAV warnings (urgent notices to mariners), weather bulletins and storm warnings. You listen to those; you do not generally file with them. That is the inversion British sailors miss. The information flows mostly outward, from CROSS to you.
So how do you get the safety net
If you want someone ashore to know your plan and raise the alarm if you do not arrive, you have to arrange it yourself. Three practical routes:
First, leave your plan with a responsible person ashore: where you are going, when you expect to arrive, the boat's description and the souls on board, plus what to do and who to call if you are overdue. Old-fashioned, completely effective.
Second, use a tracking and alerting app. The RYA SafeTrx app, long the standard for UK sailors, has been through a shake-up: it closed at the end of 2025, with user and vessel records moving to HM Coastguard. So if you have relied on SafeTrx, check what has replaced it for your home waters before you assume the watch is still running. There are several position-tracking and float-plan apps that do the job, and a satellite messenger with a check-in function is the gold standard for offshore work.
Third, on the harbour side, French marinas keep records when you check in. The capitainerie logs your arrival, and on a longer passage telling them your onward plan is a reasonable, low-tech backstop. It also keeps your paperwork tidy, which matters for the document checks I describe in carrying your boat documents.
Crossing the Channel: the one time reporting is normal
The clearest exception is the Channel crossing itself. The convention, taught by every RYA instructor, is that you call the coastguard before you leave UK or Channel Island waters (Solent Coastguard on channel 67 to keep channel 16 clear, for example) and give them: boat name, call sign and MMSI, where and when you are departing, your destination and expected arrival, and the number of people on board. They log it. You are not obliged to report in to the French side on arrival, though you can call the relevant CROSS, and you will in any case do your customs and immigration formalities at a port of entry.
That last bit is its own subject, because arriving from the UK post-Brexit you must clear in properly. The full routine is in the Sailing to France from the UK after Brexit checklist, which covers where you can land and what the douanes and immigration expect.
Crossing a traffic separation scheme
If your passage crosses the Dover Strait TSS for small craft, the busiest shipping lane in the world, the rules of the road are not optional. You cross on a heading as near as practicable at right angles to the traffic flow, you do not loiter in the lanes, and you keep clear of the big ships, which cannot manoeuvre for you. CROSS Gris-Nez and the UK side both monitor the area on radar. This is not a reporting obligation so much as a collision-avoidance one, but it is the place where a vague passage plan turns dangerous fastest. Plan the crossing with the tide and traffic, not just the distance.
A workable reporting routine for France
Put it together and a sensible visitor's habit looks like this:
- Monitor VHF 16 underway, always. It is the law and it is your link to CROSS.
- Know which CROSS station covers the water you are in, and its name, so a mayday goes out cleanly.
- Listen to the AVURNAV and weather broadcasts; the warnings are the bit France pushes to you.
- For any passage of consequence, leave a float plan with someone ashore or run a tracking app, because France will not be watching unless you arrange it.
- Crossing the Channel, call the coastguard before departure and clear customs properly on arrival.
The French system is less hand-holding than the British one and more grown-up about it: they give you excellent safety broadcasts and a responsive rescue service, and they expect you to take care of your own passage planning. Once I stopped waiting for someone to ask for my plan and started owning it myself, cruising France felt safer, not less safe. Carry a charged VHF, know your CROSS, tell someone where you are going, and you have built the net the French quite reasonably leave you to build.
