French Sailing Terms + French Practice Video ⛵️

First, let’s study the French sailing vocabulary – scroll down for the video of my sailing boat encounter in Paimpol! Follow the link for more info about the sailing boat I boarded and sailing trips in Bréhat and Paimpol.

30 French Sailing Words

1. Faire de la voile – to sail
2. Faire du bateau – to navigate a boat, wether it’s a sailing boat or something else
3. Un bateau – a boat (note the plural : des bateaux)
4. Note that we say “un bateau à …” followed by the mode of propulsion, and “un bateau de…” followed by its function
5. Un bateau à voile – a sailing boat
6. Un bateau à moteur – a motor boat
7. Un voilier – a sailing boat
8. Un navire – another fancy way to say a boat, a ship
9. Un gréement – an old fishing boat like the one you’ll see in the video below – un gréement is also a rig.
10. Une goélette – schooner
11. Un bateau de pêche – fishing boat
12. Un bateau de croisière – cruise boat
13. Un canot – dinghy
14. Un canoë – canoe
15. Une péniche – barge
16. À bord – aboard
17. À tribord – starboard side
18. À bâbord – port side
19. Lever l’ancre – to weigh anchor
20. Prendre la mer, partir en bateau – to set sail
21. Jeter l’ancre – to drop anchor
22. mouiller – to moor
23. être amarré – to be moored
24. faire une excursion touristique – to take a sightseeing tour
25. Un mât – mast
26. Une voile – sail
27. Une coque – hull
28. Un pont – deck
29. La barre – helm
30. Le foc – jib
31. La quille – keel
32. Le noeud – knot
33. Une cabine – a cabin

Are you looking for very specific French sailing terms – I suggest you visit this site which includes a very complete free French English bilingual sailing dictionary.

My French Sailing Boat Adventure

The other day I was swimming in the bay of Paimpol and saw a beautiful sailing ship in the distance. The sea that day was particularly calm and I had my flippers on, so I decided to investigate…

I swam all the way to the sailing boat and the crew invited me onboard. I was on “La Nébuleuse”, one of the prettiest old sailing ship of France. Captain Cédric gave me a tour! It was a wonderful experience.

I shot a “live” French practice video for you. Enjoy! If you like it, please ❤️, share, leave a comment: seeing your reactions really encourage me to keep shooting these live videos.

On the bottom right where you see the gear and CC options you may turn the subtitles on/off and select French or English. I checked them myself. Enjoy!

You may also enjoy my article about Bréhat – with another vidéo.