We sailed out of the Solent in June with a vague plan to cross the Atlantic that winter, and a much firmer plan to get the boat properly sorted in France first. That order of priorities turned out to be the right one. France is where we did the unglamorous work: the haul-out, the rigging check, the food shopping that fills a 38-footer to the waterline. By the time we reached Las Palmas to join the ARC fleet, the boat was ready and we were not running around the Canaries chandlery in a panic like half the dock.
If you are pointing a boat at the trade winds, France is an excellent staging post. Here is how we used it.
Why finish the boat in France, not the Canaries
The honest answer is cost and choice. Atlantic-coast France has serious boatyards, and the labour rates undercut the UK south coast on most jobs. Stainless rigging, sail repairs, electronics, watermakers: you can source all of it without a special order, and you are not paying island freight premiums.
Las Palmas in November is heaving with around 200 ARC boats plus the independent crowd, all chasing the same riggers and the same supermarket trolleys. Prices firm up and lead times stretch. The crossing itself is roughly 2,700 nautical miles to Saint Lucia, taking the average cruising yacht 18 to 21 days, so you do not want to arrive at the start line still chasing a part.
The plan that works: do the heavy refit on the French Atlantic coast in late summer, then make the hop down to the Canaries in October with a finished boat and a long shopping list already half-ticked.
Where to base yourself
La Rochelle is the obvious candidate and the one we chose. It is a sailing town to its bones, with two large marinas, dense chandlery, and good rail links so crew can fly in and out via the nearby airport. The Minimes basin alone holds several thousand berths, which tells you how much marine trade clusters there.
Other strong options:
- Les Sables-d'Olonne, home of the Vendee Globe, with a working refit culture and yards used to ocean boats.
- Lorient and La Trinite-sur-Mer in south Brittany, both heavy with race-boat expertise that filters down to cruisers.
- The Gironde and Royan if you want to drop down towards the Spanish border in stages.
If you are weighing the coastal staging route against the inland option, our piece on crossing the Bay of Biscay in a small boat covers the offshore leg, and canals vs Biscay route south lays out the trade-offs if you are coming from northern Europe.
The haul-out and refit
Book the lift early. French yards fill from September as the cruising fleet comes ashore for winter, and the popular ones near La Rochelle want booking weeks ahead. A standard antifoul, anode change and prop service is straightforward; the bigger jobs need planning.
What we had done before the Atlantic:
- Full standing rigging inspection, with two terminals replaced after the rigger spotted hairline cracks.
- Steering quadrant and autopilot ram serviced, because nothing breaks a downwind crossing like a dead pilot.
- A new asymmetric and a repaired mainsail, both turned around by a local loft inside ten days.
- Liferaft repacked to the service date, which on most rafts runs three years between services.
Budget realistically. A haul, pressure-wash, two weeks ashore and relaunch ran us comfortably into four figures before any actual work, and the rigging and sail jobs doubled it. None of that surprised us, because we had priced it before we left. The mistake people make is treating France as a quick pit stop and then discovering the real bill in November.
Provisioning for three weeks at sea
This is where France genuinely shines, and where it beats both the UK and the Canaries on quality. The supermarkets are good, the markets are better, and you can stock a boat for an ocean passage without it tasting like tinned penance.
Our approach, fed by years of doing the provisioning the boat in France from markets routine on shorter trips:
- Dry and tinned base load from a big hypermarket, done in one car-hire run. Pasta, rice, UHT milk, tins, oil, the lot. UHT milk keeps unopened for months, which solves the no-fridge-space problem.
- Fresh produce from the morning market two days before departure from the Canaries, not in France, since three weeks is too long for most of it. France is for the long-life base; the islands top up the fresh.
- Wine and cheese laid in early. Vacuum-packed hard cheese survives a crossing well, and French supermarket wine at three to six euros a bottle makes the dock parties cheaper than anywhere downstream.
Weigh it. We added close to half a tonne of stores and water, and the boat sat noticeably lower. Trim matters on a long downwind run, so stow heavy tins low and central, not in the ends.
Water, fuel and the systems that keep you alive
Top up everything in France while it is cheap and easy. Diesel on the French Atlantic coast is straightforward to bunker, and our guide to boat fuel in France and where to bunker lists the practicalities of fuel berths and payment.
For the crossing itself we fitted and tested a watermaker in La Rochelle, ran it for a week to bed it in, and carried enough bottled water for the full passage anyway. Redundancy is the whole game on an Atlantic crossing. Two ways to charge, two ways to navigate, two ways to make water if you can manage it.
The systems checklist we worked through before leaving France:
- Engine fully serviced, with spare impellers, belts, filters and a known-good starter battery.
- Gas locker checked and a spare bottle aboard, since fittings differ once you leave Europe.
- Two independent GPS sources plus paper backup, because electronics do fail.
- Solar and a way to keep the autopilot fed for three weeks without running the engine raw.
Crew, medical and the abandon-ship kit
France is also the place to sort the human side of the crossing, not just the boat. Crew flying in to join you can reach La Rochelle, Nantes or Bordeaux easily by air and rail, which makes France a far simpler muster point than a single flight into the Canaries with a fixed start date bearing down.
The medical kit deserves real attention while you are still somewhere with proper pharmacies. We restocked ours in France: prescription painkillers, antibiotics arranged with our GP before leaving, seasickness tablets in quantity, and a decent suture and wound kit. You are up to two weeks from any help in mid-Atlantic, so the kit is your hospital.
The grab bag and safety gear are the other France jobs:
- Liferaft serviced and in date, with most rafts on a three-year service cycle.
- EPIRB battery in date and registered to the right details.
- Flares within their expiry, since they are easy to forget and a pain to source late.
- Jackstays, harnesses and tethers checked and fitted, because a downwind crossing means a lot of foredeck work in a rolling boat.
Do this in a French marina with a chandler on the dock, not in the Canaries scrum, and you will sleep better all the way across.
A rough budget from our 2025 trip
Numbers are personal, but here is the shape of what the French staging cost us, so you can plan rather than guess.
- Haul-out, two weeks ashore, antifoul and relaunch: comfortably into four figures before any specialist labour.
- Rigging inspection plus two replaced terminals, and the sail loft work: roughly the same again.
- Provisioning the dry and tinned base load: a single hypermarket run that filled the car and the boat.
- Wine and long-life cheese laid in at French supermarket prices, with bottles from three to six euros.
- Diesel and water topped up cheaply before the run south.
None of it was a surprise, because we had priced every line before leaving the UK. The boats that struggle are the ones treating France as a fuel stop and meeting the real bill at the start line.
One last thing: the paperwork window
If you are non-EU, watch your Schengen days. The 90-in-180 rule means a UK-flagged crew cannot loiter in France indefinitely while finishing the boat. Spend 90 days in the Schengen zone and you must leave for 90 before returning, with overstay fines starting around 200 euros and re-entry bans a real risk. Plan the refit so your shore time fits the window, and read the Schengen 90/180 day rule for boaters before you commit to a long summer ashore.
We crossed our t's, dropped down to the Canaries with a finished boat in late October, and had a fortnight spare to enjoy the pre-start buzz instead of fixing things. That fortnight, paid for by doing the hard work in France, was the best money we spent all year.
