There is an invisible line 300 metres off every French beach, and crossing it stupidly is the fastest way to get a visit from the Gendarmerie Maritime. I have watched it happen: a charter RIB came screaming towards a beach near Le Lavandou at full chat, swimmers scattering, and a patrol boat materialised within minutes. The fine was the least of the skipper's problems. He had nearly run someone down.
If you cruise France in summer you are constantly crossing in and out of this band. Get the rules into your bones now and you will move through it without a second thought, and without endangering anyone.
The 300-metre band: what it is
French law defines a coastal strip, the bande des 300 metres, measured 300 metres seaward from the water's edge. The water's edge, not the high-water mark, which means the line moves with the tide. It runs the length of the entire coastline and wraps around islands, islets and any rock or sandbank that shows above water.
Inside that band the headline rule is a speed limit: 5 knots. It is general, permanent, and does not depend on any buoy being there to remind you. Some local prefectural orders tighten it to 3 knots in particular spots. You are responsible for knowing you are inside the band whether or not it is marked.
Five knots is slow. On a displacement yacht you are probably under it already. On anything that planes, you must come off the plane and crawl. The point of the limit is obvious the moment you think about it: this is where the swimmers are.
Where the swimmers are, and where you must not go
Within the 300-metre band, supervised beaches mark out a bathing zone, usually with yellow buoys. Inside that marked bathing area, navigation is forbidden. Not slow, not careful, forbidden. No boats, no dinghies, no paddleboards under power, nothing with a hull and a purpose other than people swimming.
A coastal town's official beach marking plan (the plan de balisage) sets out where you can navigate, where you can anchor, and where boats must stay clear so swimmers have the water to themselves. The yellow buoys are the visible edge of that plan. When you see a line of them, you stay outside, full stop.
For a cruiser this shapes how you approach an anchorage off a popular beach. You drop the hook outside the bathing zone, in the navigable part of the band at slow speed, and you swim ashore or take the dinghy in through a marked channel if one exists. You do not anchor among the buoys, and you certainly do not motor through them to get closer to the sand.
Beach landings by dinghy: the bit cruisers ask about most
This is the practical heart of it for anyone who wants to get the family ashore for an afternoon.
Many beaches provide a marked access channel (a chenal) for small craft, a corridor through the bathing zone marked by buoys, often coloured, that lets dinghies and tenders reach the beach without crossing the swimming area. You use the channel, you keep to walking pace, and you respect the 5-knot limit (frequently less in the channel itself). Where there is no channel, you land outside the bathing zone and accept the longer walk or paddle.
Three things I have learned the hard way bringing a tender ashore in France:
- Kill the speed early. A tender at 5 knots still throws a wake that annoys swimmers. I idle in.
- Watch for snorkellers outside the buoys. They drift, they are low in the water, and they are nearly invisible against a sparkling sea. A propeller and a snorkeller is the nightmare scenario the whole 300-metre regime exists to prevent.
- Pull the dinghy well up the beach or anchor it off with a small kedge. A tender that floats off on a rising tide leaves you stranded and is a hazard to the very swimmers you just threaded past.
If you are landing to explore a town or grab provisions, my notes on provisioning a boat from French markets cover where the dinghy run is worth it and where it is not.
Snorkelling and swimming from your own boat
Swimming off the boat at anchor is one of the joys of a French summer, and it is mostly unrestricted as long as you are clear of bathing zones and channels. A few habits keep it safe and legal.
Fly a flag or float a marker if you are diving with bottles, because other boats need to know there are people in the water below. Free-diving and snorkelling carry no such requirement but the same common sense applies: a swimmer well away from the boat in a busy anchorage should tow a float. Inside marine protected areas the rules tighten again, both for what you can do and how close you can get to the seabed. The seagrass anchoring restrictions on the Riviera, which I get into when talking about the posidonia anchoring ban, exist to protect the same habitats you will be snorkelling over, so the two topics are joined at the hip.
Spearfishing has its own layer of rules, including a minimum age and gear restrictions, and is banned in many protected zones and near bathing areas. If you spearfish, that is a separate study before you load the gun.
Worth knowing too: the no-licence freedom that covers line fishing from a boat does not extend to selling anything you take, and the marking rules are strict. I set out the detail in my piece on fishing from your boat in France as a visitor, and the short version is that a snorkeller picking up the odd thing from the seabed is in exactly the same legal frame as an angler. Inside the bathing zones and the marked channels, neither activity belongs.
Jet-skis, paddleboards and the towed-toys problem
The 300-metre band gets stricter still for the fast, the noisy and the towed, and if you carry any of these aboard you need to know the lines.
Jet-skis (and similar personal watercraft) are barred from operating within 300 metres of the coast altogether. They must reach open water through a designated channel, at the speed limit, and only then open up beyond the band. If you have a tender that planes, the same logic of self-restraint applies even where it is not a jet-ski: inside the band you are at 5 knots regardless of what the hull can do.
Towed inflatables, the ringos and bananas that keep children happy, are heavily regulated and in many marked zones simply not allowed. The combination of a planing boat, a towline, and a beach full of swimmers is exactly what the bathing-zone rules are written to prevent. If you want to tow toys, you do it well offshore, clear of the band and clear of other anchored boats, with a designated lookout watching the person in the water. Paddleboards and kayaks under their own power are far more relaxed, but a paddleboarder drifting outside the buoys is still a low, hard-to-see hazard that you, under power, must avoid.
The thread through all of it is the same. The faster and more powerful the thing you are operating, the further from the beach the law expects you to keep it. A swimmer always has right of the water near the sand.
How it all fits together in a normal afternoon
Picture the standard French summer scene, because it is the one you will live a hundred times. You approach a bay with a beach. Half a mile out you are still doing hull speed. As you cross into the 300-metre band, off any plane, down to 5 knots or less. You spot the yellow bathing-zone buoys and you stay outside them, finding holding ground in the navigable water. Anchor down, engine off.
Now the bay is yours to enjoy. Kids over the side, snorkel gear on, dinghy launched. When you take the tender ashore you find the marked channel or, failing that, land at the edge of the bathing area and walk in. You watch for heads in the water the entire time, because the speed limit and the buoyed zones are not bureaucratic fussiness, they are the reason nobody gets hurt.
The French take this band seriously, and after a few summers here, so do I. The Gendarmerie Maritime patrol it, the locals report the idiots, and the swimmers, quite reasonably, expect the water near the sand to be theirs. Respect the 300 metres and you are an invisible, welcome guest. Blast through it and you are the charter skipper at Le Lavandou, explaining yourself to a man in uniform and lucky not to be explaining yourself to a magistrate.
