Home

THE SEA, A FRENCH PASSION

France, located like a vast isthmus between Northern and Southern Europe, with the largest area of European waters and more than 5,500 kilometres of coast, naturally looks towards the maritime world.

While in centuries past the organic link between the sea and France was expressed in a huge fleet of powerful vessels, maritime trading posts on every continent and large numbers of navigators setting off to explore the earth, men such as Bougainville and Dumont d’Urville who discovered the Antarctic, today this relationship between the sea and the people of France has many faces, less spectacular but still reflecting the French love of the sea.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, technological advances and social progress enabled millions of French people to visit the coast. The railways made it easier to get to the coast, and sea bathing and the first seaside resorts - Le Touquet, Biarritz, Nice and others - developed in the early 20th century. But although the Yacht Club de France was founded in 1867, water-based recreational activities were still the preserve of the well-off.

It was the introduction of paid holidays in 1936  that enabled a great many families to sample the pleasures of the sea. But the real rush to the coast occurred in the 1950s to 1970s. The improved standard of living, the spread of car-ownership and the change in social attitudes - women could now wear bathing costumes instead of having to remain fully clothed as they did in the 19th century - made water-based leisure activities more democratic. The coasts saw an explosion of property development: hotels, holiday apartments, second homes and restaurants multiplied. For two out of three French people today, the sea is still the favourite destination and they sometimes go in search of it abroad.

Tne success of water sports

But the most significant sign in recent years is our compatriots’ growing passion for water sports, and above all for sailing. Besides Les Glénans - the most famous sailing school in France - hundreds of other sailing clubs have sprung up along the coast, and holiday centres offer courses for children and adults. In 2006 there are an estimated 4.5 million leisure sailors in France (sailing and motor boats combined) and, despite the creation and enlargement of marinas, waiting time for a berth can be as long as five years, as it is at La Baule and Saint-Malo (Atlantic seaboard).

The successes of French sportsmen - Bernard Moitessier, Éric Tabarly, Florence Arthaud, Perron brothers, Isabelle Autissier and many others - also feed this popular enthusiasm. "Éric Tabarly’s win in the 1964 Transat and Florence Arthaud’s victory in the Route du Rhum in 1990 had a extraordinary impact", comments Sylvie David-Rivérieulx, an enthusiastic expert on the History of Navigation in France and public relations manager for the Musée national de la Marine. "That a tiny slip of a woman, not yet thirty years old, won this multihull race, way ahead of the men, made a deep impression on people."

As well as sailing, growing numbers of French people are now taking up a whole range of water sports: Biarritz hosts a world surfing championship each year; Marseille has an international reputation as a diving centre; thousands of people go windsurfing, rowing and sea canoeing, including a few international champions. More and more retired people who migrate to the coast are acquiring a motor boat to go fishing for bass; and in recent years stressed executives have got hooked on thalassotherapy (see Label France No. 54), a quicker, albeit expensive, way of getting fit again.

The sea makes people dream

The appeal of the sea may also be cultural. The large gatherings of sailing boats and historic vessels that began about fifteen years ago, such as those at Douarnenez, Rouen, Brest and Cannes, really pull in the crowds. Giant aquariums, such as those at Le Croisic, Biarritz, or, even more, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, with its Nausicaä centre which has had more than 9 million visitors since it opened fifteen years ago, offer thrills without danger, such as an encounter with a shark ... behind glass!

But at a time when television serves as sounding board for analysing people’s centres of interest, the most striking sign of the French people’s taste for the sea is its media coverage. Examples are the audience for Cousteau’s programmes or the series Les Secrets de la mer Rouge [Secrets of the Red Sea], based on the accounts of Henry de Monfreid. "Twenty years ago there was no on-board camera during the big races. Nowadays, the television evening news starts with the Route du Rhum or the Vendée Globe", comments Didier Ravon, Editor of Voiles et voiliers [Sails and Sailing Boats].

"Television has played a huge part in developing interest in the sea in France. A magazine like Thalassa has played a key role", is Sylvie David-Rivérieulx’s view. Indeed this programme, the country’s most popular, is watched by more than 4 million people each week. If you ask Georges Pernoud, its creator and presenter, how he explains Thalassa’s success, he replies simply: "The sea makes people dream..."; but he also indirectly casts light on the desire it arouses, not only in France but in other countries too. "The world of the sea is a world about which people are passionate, [...] man does not have gills, so there is always an element of risk". It is undoubtedly this passion and this sense of risk, often missing from daily life in our modern societies, that makes the sea so fascinating and attractive ...