North Brittany is the coast that turns sailors into navigators. The tides are huge, the rocks are everywhere, and almost nothing happens by the clock: it happens by the state of the water. Get it right and it is the most rewarding cruising ground in France, a string of walled towns, granite islands and drying anchorages that feel a century away from the Mediterranean crowds. Ten days is enough to work your way west from Saint-Malo to the pink granite coast and back, and that is the cruise I want to lay out here.
We did it over two weeks in our own boat, having crossed from the Channel Islands, but the core of it compresses neatly into ten days if you keep moving.
The thing that governs everything: tides
Before the day-by-day, the headline. The tidal range on this coast is among the largest in the world. Saint-Malo swings from roughly 3.6 metres at neaps to around 9.5 metres on big springs, and the streams through the channels and around the islands can run 4 to 6 knots on springs. Every leg in this plan is timed around the tide, not the distance, because the distances are short and the gates are not.
If you are coming from a tideless sea, do not even leave the pontoon until you have read Brittany tides for Mediterranean sailors. It is the single most useful piece of preparation for this coast.
Days one and two: Saint-Malo and the Iles Chausey
Start in Saint-Malo. Lock into the Vauban basin or take a berth at Les Bas-Sablons across the water, call the harbour on VHF channel 09, and check the gate times: the main lock, the ecluse du Naye, opens about two and a half hours either side of high water. Spend a day in the walled town, then make the short hop out to the Iles Chausey, around 15 to 20 nautical miles east.
Chausey is the largest archipelago in Europe and the tidal range out there approaches 14 metres, the biggest in France. Pick up a visitor mooring in the Sound rather than anchoring, because the bottom is foul and the streams are fierce. Watch the whole place transform as the tide drops. The pilotage needs care, so read up on the Iles Chausey crossing before you go.
Days three and four: Saint-Cast and Dahouet
Back on the mainland, work west into the Baie de la Fresnaye. Saint-Cast-le-Guildo has a modern marina with good shelter, and a little further on lies Dahouet, a tiny, almost hidden tidal harbour squeezed between rocks that is one of the prettiest spots on this coast. Dahouet dries and the entrance is narrow, so you arrive on a rising tide and watch your depth.
These two make a relaxed pair of days, and they break the run west into manageable bites. The streams in the Baie de Saint-Brieuc are gentler than the channels further on, so it is a good place to find your rhythm before the harder pilotage ahead.
Days five and six: Saint-Quay-Portrieux and the Trieux
Saint-Quay-Portrieux is the one all-weather, all-tide marina on this stretch, accessible 24 hours behind a deep-water breakwater, which makes it a useful anchor point in the plan when the tides are not cooperating elsewhere. Call on VHF channel 09. We used it as a base to reprovision and wait out a blow.
From there, head for the Trieux river. The approach winds in through rocks past the Ile de Brehat, and the river itself is one of the loveliest passages in Brittany, wooded banks, oyster beds, the lighthouse on the Roches Douvres offshore. Lezardrieux sits a few miles up the river behind a tidal sill that holds around 2 metres, with the marina office answering on VHF channel 09. For the detail of the river entrance and the island, the Ile de Brehat and the Trieux river guide is the one to have open on the chart table.
Day seven: the Ile de Brehat
Give Brehat a full day. It is a car-free island of pink rock, hydrangeas and footpaths, and you can anchor or take a mooring off it depending on the tide and the spot. Walk the island, eat ashore, and watch the streams race through the channels around it. This is the gentle heart of the cruise, the day where you stop counting miles.
Days eight and nine: Treguier and the pink granite coast
Push west again to the Jaudy river and up to Treguier, a cathedral town reached by a winding wooded estuary, with a friendly marina at the head. Then on to the Cote de Granit Rose, the pink granite coast around Ploumanac'h and Perros-Guirec, where the rock is genuinely rose-coloured and piled into shapes that look sculpted. Offshore lie the Sept-Iles, a seabird reserve with one of the largest gannet colonies in France.
The pilotage here is rock-strewn and demands attention, but the reward is the most photogenic coast in Brittany. The full picture lives in the pink granite coast sailing guide, which I would read before committing to the inshore passages.
Day ten: the run back, or push on
By day ten you have a choice. Turn and run back east with the prevailing wind behind you, hopping the same harbours in reverse, or keep pushing west towards Roscoff, the Bay of Morlaix and eventually the Chenal du Four. We turned back, because ten days west and ten days back is a fortnight, but the coast keeps going as far as your time allows.
The numbers that frame the cruise
- Tidal range at Saint-Malo: roughly 3.6 metres neaps to 9.5 metres springs
- Chausey tidal range: close to 14 metres
- Streams in the channels: 4 to 6 knots on springs
- Saint-Malo to the Iles Chausey: around 15 to 20 nautical miles
- VHF channel for the harbours along the coast: 09
Provisioning, fuel and the all-tide harbours
On a ten-day cruise you cannot carry everything, so plan your reprovisioning around the bigger ports. Saint-Malo at the start is a city with everything; Saint-Quay-Portrieux in the middle is the obvious mid-cruise restock because it is the one all-tide marina where you can come and go regardless of the water; Treguier and Lezardrieux have decent shops at the head of their rivers. The car-free islands, Chausey and Brehat, have almost nothing, so treat them as places you arrive at fully stocked.
Fuel follows the same map. Top up at the marinas, not the islands, and never let the tanks run low on a coast where you may need to motor hard against a foul stream to make a tidal gate. We made a rule of filling water and diesel whenever we were alongside with the pumps free, because the next chance might be a drying harbour or a mooring with no services at all.
The single most useful structural decision in the whole plan is to treat Saint-Quay-Portrieux as your pivot. It is one of only two all-tide harbours on this stretch, accessible 24 hours, which means when a chain of tidal gates refuses to line up, you have a guaranteed place to wait that does not depend on the height of the water. We used it twice exactly that way.
What I would tell anyone planning this
Do not over-plan the mileage and under-plan the tides. The legs are short, often under 20 miles, but the wrong tide turns a two-hour passage into a fight or strands you outside a drying harbour for six hours. Build your itinerary around high water at each gate, keep a day or two in hand for weather, and use Saint-Quay-Portrieux as your all-tide bolthole when the timing goes against you.
Ten days gets you from the biggest tides in France to the prettiest rock on the coast and back. If you have a fortnight and want to keep going, the natural extension is to follow the North Brittany cruising guide all the way to the Chenal du Four, or to start the trip with the Channel Islands to North Brittany crossing as we did. Either way, this is a coast that pays back every hour you spend learning its tides.
