Marinas, a home for everyone!
Until now, recreational boaters are still rarely seen along France’s coasts. Firstly, because there are relatively few of them: at the start of the 1950s, there are barely more than 1,500 live-aboard boats, all categories combined (there will be 10 times more one decade later, and 200 times more in the 21st century).
Secondly, due to the fact that there are no dedicated facilities for this practice. At the time, recreational boat users do not have any other choice than to discreetly blend in with the landscape, taking up the few spaces left vacant by the sea professionals. Without any specific boathouses, they moor their boats wherever they can: on a rickety pontoon, improvised with differing levels of success by their local club in the oily water of commercial or fishing basins, and sometimes directly alongside a wharf stained black with coal or various mineral ores. To make matters worse, this cohabitation is often problematic, as the professionals do not really appreciate the presence of these troublemakers with their fragile hulls and they make this known to them, often harshly…
At the time, the safest and most comfortable solution is to leave your boat attached to an individual mooring buoy in a sheltered anchorage area. But this does not work in the same way everywhere: Brittany has the most abundant spaces, with its many estuaries and creeks that are protected from the swells of the open sea. In straighter coastal areas, the oil-covered wharfs are the only option.
A benefactor in les Embiez
The growth in this activity and therefore demand for better adapted structures will transform the landscape. Welcomed like a blessing by the growing numbers of boaters, the first recreational marinas are created in the mid-1960s, through both private initiatives and a State-level coastal development policy with strong commitments.
The basins in the very first marina were filled with water in spring 1963 in the Var region. This is Port Saint-Pierre des Embiez, on the island of the same name, off the coast of Brusc, near Toulon. This first marina owes everything to the entrepreneur Paul Ricard, who, after buying Bendor Island in 1950, acquires Les Embiez in 1958 with the ambition to “protect this natural paradise and make it a destination for everyone looking to recharge and reconnect, far away from the crowds and the pollution of the continent”, as he will later write. While the construction of a marina might today seem to contradict this goal, we must recognize that the benefactor was able to take care of this space by limiting the footprint of the buildings, safeguarding the majority of the island and using it for activities focused on preserving and protecting nature – including a sanctuary with the French association for the protection of birds (LPO) and a laboratory focused on marine biodiversity. Launched in 1959, the work follows an original approach for the time: the hard infrastructures are built before the marshy areas planned for the basins are dredged and filled with water. The berthing capacity will gradually increase over the years from 300 to 750 spaces.
Port Pierre Canto, Cannes 1965
A short time later, it is once again a private investor who launches Cannes’ first dedicated marina, with the city’s old port occupied mainly by fishing boats, commercial vessels and cruisers serving the various islands. After convincing the municipality of the project’s benefits and securing a 50-year concession for this site, the real estate developer Pierre Canto finances all the work to build the marina through a company whose convoluted name – International Sporting Yachting Club de la Mer – might raise a smile. But this is a real evolution: inaugurated in 1965, the marina takes the name of its creator and establishes recreational boats as an integral part of the Cannes landscape, offering 650 spaces, including around 100 reserved for visiting boats. With a pricing approach that causes some complaints at the time: the meter runs from midnight to midnight, which means a two-day charge for spending just one night in port…
The blue gold rush
Barely a year after the opening of Port Canto, the coastline between Provence and Côte d’Azur sees a number of yards take shape. The first to be inaugurated include the new port in Menton Garavan and Les Capucins in La Ciotat in 1967. But everywhere seawalls are being extended, dredgers are working continuously and boats are starting to moor up at new berths installed in basins where cranes and other construction vehicles are still operating: from Hyères to Lavandou, Giens (La Tour Fondue), Porquerolles, Port Gallice, near Antibes, and Porquerolles.
The new Beaulieu port opens in 1968 and the Saint-Raphaël, La Napoule and La Rague marinas welcome their first boats from the 1969 season. In just three years, more than 10,000 dedicated spaces for recreational boats are created from scratch in just this eastern section of the Mediterranean! Not to mention the structures that are currently being extended and the many other programs that will become operational between the late 1960s and the start of the following decade, such as Saint-Laurent-du-Var or Les Lecques, as well as Marina-Baie des Anges with its impressive pyramids.
During these years, it is impossible to really keep track of the berthing capacity: it increases every quarter, with several hundred spaces added as the facilities progress…
With just a few exceptions, these developments are private ventures, with developers ensuring their project’s profitability thanks to the real estate operations involved, in addition to selling as many spaces as possible (legally capped at 75% of the marina’s total capacity, with the other berths to be kept available for hire) under long-term leases, with usage rights for periods up to 50 years. All at a price that sometimes exceeds the value of the boat itself. So, a very different approach to that seen on other seaboards.
Rhe discreet charm of Marshland
During these years, an unusual project stands out on the Provence coast, with the “lakeside settlement” of Port Grimaud, created by the architect François Spoerry. A development that attracts people from well beyond the world of recreational boats, illustrated for instance by the French television show on January 1, 1968 in which we see Brigitte Bardot stroll around the canals and narrow streets of the marina – which is not yet fully completed – filmed by François Reichenbach (including images shot on board La Désirade, François Spoerry’s personal yacht, built five years earlier by Jouët). This architect, who owned a house in Cavalaire, found out in 1962 that a 33 ha plot was being put up for sale at the back of the bay of Saint-Tropez. This deal does not attract interest from conventional property developers due to the inhospitable nature of the location, a marshy area stuck between two rivers with erratic courses. It highlights the capacity for innovation of a man who is very motivated by recreational boats and who comes up with all sorts of technical solutions to develop the village of his dreams, with a berth for each apartment.
The building permit, submitted in 1963, is approved only three years later due to a number of administrative obstacles, including the planned work to remove two abandoned silos, which the Marine Affairs Department considered to be “essential sea marks” for navigation. Spoerry ends up convincing the authorities by assuring them that the bell tower of the future village church would be a far better reference point… The work gets started right away, and despite the many difficulties, including the devastating floods when the Giscle, the larger river, burst its banks, the first apartments and berths are delivered in summer 1967. The initial project will be completed at the very start of the 1970s, with capacity to welcome 1,100 boats. This corresponds to what is today known as Port Grimaud 1, with the following extensions – Port Grimaud 2 and 3 – making it possible to create a further 1,300 spaces.
At the same time, on the other side of the River Giscle, the Cogolin marinas have followed a similar path to their neighbor – with a far more conventional design – and also welcome their first boats in 1967, with their capacity eventually rising to 1,500 spaces.
Languedoc-Roussillon taking off
To the west of the Rhône delta, in a bleak and forbidding landscape – which was therefore ignored by property developers – the development of the coastline takes on a whole different form. Due to a lack of motivated investors, the French State, keen to boost the region and capture part of the flows of tourists who flock each year to the Spanish coasts, takes things in hand. In 1963, Georges Pompidou’s government sets up the DATAR (inter-ministerial delegation for territorial development and regional attractiveness), led by Olivier Guichard, which will immediately launch the Languedoc Roussillon tourism development mission, better known by the name of its president, Pierre Racine, former chief of staff for the previous prime minister, Michel Debré. Among other projects, from roads to airports and various infrastructures, the Racine Mission decides to build several seaside resorts: this leads to the creation of the Saint-Cyprien, Port Barcarès, Port Leucate, Gruissan, Le Cap d’Agde, La Grande-Motte and Port-Camargue marinas.
Following extensive work to clear up this mosquito-infested marshy area, the construction projects effectively get underway in 1966 and the vast La Grande Motte marina is the first to welcome boats in early summer 1967. The following autumn, it will even welcome a visit by General De Gaulle to look at the progress made with a project that is still some way away from its current appearance: while the port is already operational, the areas around it are still wasteland and the famous pyramids designed by the architect Jean Balladur are still at their foundation stage…
By the end of this decade, the results are impressive for this region which, up until then, offered virtually no installations at all for recreational boats: including the other facilities created almost at the same time (such as Carnon or Le Canet-Plage), once again more than 10,000 spaces have emerged from the sand in just a few years, alongside major possibilities for storage on land.
Working with the tides
This evolution turns out to be more challenging along the Atlantic and Channel coasts. Despite the presence of a number of very active clubs, people in these regions will need to wait longer than their peers in the Mediterranean to have access to genuine marinas for recreational boats. This paradox is linked in part to the large number of natural sheltered areas along these coasts, as well as the fact that building them here involves more complex issues due to the tidal range.
Until the late 1960s, from Normandy to Brittany, Vendée or the Southwest, recreational boat users need to content themselves with the small number of pontoons spread across the main commercial or fishing ports. However, there is no shortage of ideas: in Saint-Malo, there has been talk of creating a marina in the Bas-Sablons cove since the 1950s. But due to various objections, this project will not be approved by the authorities until 1968 and will finally be brought into service in 1976. In the meantime, the three pontoons in the Vauban basin have helped improve the situation, but the restrictions on access for recreational boats to the essential Naye locks highlight how leisure boating is only “tolerated” here at the time.
The Arcachon and Royan ports are pioneers and among the first to set aside a large part of their facilities for recreational boats from the mid-1960s. In the Eastern Channel region, Courseulles and Ouistreham are also relatively early adopters. However, the first Channel-Atlantic marina specially built for recreational boats opens at Port Haliguen, in Quiberon Bay, in 1968. Many others will follow, with most of the projects in the pipeline for years before becoming a reality in the 1970s: from Moulin-Blanc in Brest to Pornic, Le Crouesty, Granville (with its famous “Jarlan-type” caissons, perforated concrete walls designed to cushion the swell) and Les Sables d’Olonne. Not to mention of course the development of Pointe des Minimes, in La Rochelle, where the first three pontoons – 120 spaces available – are created in 1971. Today, this iconic marina can accommodate 4,700 boats, continuing to rival Port Camargue (5,000 spaces) for the title of Europe’s leading marina.
