Every captain knows the moment. The vessel is closing on a bay it has never visited, the day’s programme calls for a stop, and two questions surface at once: how fast may I approach the shore, and where am I allowed to drop the anchor? In yachting, where navigation is overwhelmingly coastal and stops follow the owner’s mood, these questions come up daily. The easy answer — “five knots inside three hundred metres” — no longer covers it. In the Mediterranean especially, local rules have multiplied and tightened, and improvisation now carries a heavy price.
Three layers of rules, stacked
To find your way, you have to see maritime regulation as three stacked levels. The first is international: the COLREGs, the rules for preventing collisions at sea, apply everywhere and at all times — the captain’s common foundation. The second is national: each state sets general rules — in France, the well-known 300-metre coastal band. The third, and the most treacherous, is local: maritime prefectural orders, municipal by-laws, marine-park and protected-area regulations. It is this last level that changes from one bay to the next, shifts every season, and is precisely what you don’t know when you discover a zone. The golden rule: local always overrides general, and local is what you must go looking for.
Speed: the 300-metre band and its overlays
In France, speed is limited to 5 knots within the 300-metre band measured from the shoreline — a general, permanent limit that applies even with no buoyage at all, and that also runs around islands, islets and drying rocks. Beware: the shoreline shifts with the tide, so on a big coefficient your 300-metre band moves with it. The maritime prefect can tighten the rules in defined zones — channels, swimming areas, reserves — and port entrances usually impose their own limits. Competence is split: the maritime prefect governs the navigation and anchoring of vessels, the mayor the activities run from the beach. The penalty is anything but symbolic: up to six months’ imprisonment and a €3,750 fine for a simple coastal speeding offence.
Anchoring: the end of improvisation in the Med
It is on anchoring that the landscape has changed most. To protect the Posidonia seagrass meadow — an ecosystem that grows back only centimetres a year — the Mediterranean maritime prefecture has built, on the back of its 2019 framework order, a web of decrees banning vessels of 24 metres and over from anchoring over the meadows. In practice, a large yacht must now either stay clear of the seagrass or use an organised anchoring zone or an authorised buoy field; even dynamic positioning is regulated. Penalties reach €150,000, alongside prison sentences and bans from navigating in French waters. The neighbours apply the same logic: in the Balearics, Decree 25/2018 bans anchoring on the “red” and “yellow” Posidonia zones, with fines that can climb to two million euros and a dedicated surveillance fleet through the summer; in Italy, the port authorities’ ordinances set the bans locally. Everywhere, the reflex is the same: you no longer anchor “by eye.”
The captain’s method: inform yourself before you anchor
The good news is that all of this information is public and accessible — provided you go and get it before you arrive, not once the anchor is on the bottom. These are the channels to cross-check, every time:
| Source | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Charts and Sailing Directions (SHOM / Admiralty) | Seabed nature, regulated zones, dangers |
| Weekly Notices to Mariners | Free chart corrections, published online |
| Urgent Notices to Mariners (AVURNAV) | Wrecks, works, closed zones (VHF 16, NAVTEX, prefecture sites) |
| Maritime prefecture websites | Orders in force, by zone, downloadable |
| DONIA app | Precise seabed mapping: green = seagrass, no anchoring |
| Harbour office / local agent | Today’s rules, notices in force, available buoy fields |
A few reflexes make the difference. Call the harbour office on VHF before you enter: it knows the day’s notices better than any chart. Check the maritime prefecture’s website on the morning of departure — an order may be brand new. Read the seabed on screen before you pay out chain: on DONIA, green means no. Over 24 metres, book an organised anchorage or an authorised mooring, and do it early in the season. Distrust “it was fine last year”: the rules have changed faster than the habits. And log, in writing, why you anchored where you did — under inspection, a documented decision protects you.
Informing yourself about an unknown zone is not administrative box-ticking: it is a professional skill in its own right, on a par with routeing or weather. The captain who cross-checks the sources before easing off the throttle or dropping the hook turns a zone of uncertainty into controlled navigation — and shields the owner from the fine, the detention and the file that ends up before a judge. It is precisely this regulatory watch, kept up from ashore and constantly refreshed, that separates a serene operation from an exposed one.