Day: 6 August 2026

The Cannes Yachting Festival has made ‘slow boating’ the theme of its 49th edition, which runs from 8th to 13th September, championing a gentler and more sustainable way to enjoy the sea.

Borrowed from the idea of slow tourism, the approach favours cruising in short legs, spending more time in coastal areas and paying closer attention to the marine environment. It is built around pace, the choice of route and restraint rather than speed, and is embodied by a new generation of boats designed for comfort and easy handling. The edition is the first under the festival’s new director, Constance Brément, who took over in January.

“Slow boating answers a very concrete need: giving time and space back to the voyage at sea and to the places it crosses,” said Brément. “The boats, like the marina networks and destinations present this year, show that the journey and its stopovers are an essential part of the experience — encouraging navigation that is more responsible, more local and more mindful of the marine environment.”

A wider shift

The festival frames the trend as part of a broader change in how people want to travel. A 2023 study by France’s Fédération des Industries Nautiques found that 72 per cent of boaters surveyed wanted to slow their pace, 65 per cent to cut fuel consumption and 58 per cent felt weary of rigid itineraries. A separate Booking.com survey of more than 27,000 travellers across 33 countries found that 67 per cent wanted to discover less-crowded destinations and more immersive experiences.

Marinas as the backbone

Central to the idea is infrastructure. The festival argues that networks of well-spaced marinas make coastal hopping practical, letting sailors adapt their stops to the weather and rely less on the engine, while turning each port into a gateway to local food, heritage and culture. Among the marina groups and destinations taking part are the associations representing Catalonia and Sardinia, the Balearic operator IPM-IMG, the Mediterranean network D-Marin and IGY, which runs the marina in Cannes’ own Vieux Port. Closer to home, Marina Baie des Anges, between Nice and Antibes, is presenting a €63 million upgrade of its 515-berth port, while further afield Barbados and Tunisia are pitching themselves as unhurried cruising grounds.

Boats built to slow down

The trend is visible on the pontoons too. Jeanneau’s Sea Loft 480, neither monohull nor catamaran, is a hybrid-electric coastal cruiser with solar panels for recharging at anchor. The Caelum 1029 Oasis Meu Amor is a solar-powered floating home built to ‘live on the water’ rather than race across it. And the Aventura 37 Explorer is a fuel-efficient trawler catamaran made for long, slow passages, part of a growing appetite for trawlers among owners who travel for the route rather than the speed.

The festival in numbers

Founded in 1977, the Cannes Yachting Festival spreads across the Vieux Port and Port Canto and is regarded as the opening event of the international boating season. This year’s edition is expected to bring together 680 exhibitors and more than 700 boats, ranging from 5 to 50 metres, with close to 150 world premieres and some 56,000 visitors.

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Photo source: Cannes Yachting Festival

A seller who stays silent about a violent or dangerous neighbour can be made to compensate the buyer for the resulting loss in a property’s value, as France’s highest court has just confirmed, upholding an award of more than €100,000 against sellers who concealed an aggressive neighbour they had themselves repeatedly reported to police.

The case, decided by the Cour de cassation at the end of May, concerned a Paris apartment. Its owners had bought it, with a parking space, for €615,000 in 2011 and sold it on for €710,000 in 2016. What they did not tell the buyers was that they had been targeted by the occupant of a neighbouring flat, a man whose behaviour was described in court as abnormal and extremely aggressive, and against whom they had lodged complaints with the police.

After moving in, the new owners ran into the same problem, filing their own reports over the following years. In 2020 the situation turned frightening, when the neighbour rang at their door and held a loaded pistol to the wife’s head before her husband forced him away, leaving both hospitalised in shock. The couple took the former owners to court, arguing that the sellers had deliberately hidden a situation no buyer could reasonably have overlooked.

What the court decided

The buyers did not ask for the sale to be cancelled; they chose to keep the apartment and claim damages instead. A Paris court found in their favour in 2021, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the decision in July 2024, and on 28th May 2026 the Cour de cassation rejected the sellers’ final appeal. The sellers were ordered to pay €106,500 — 15% of the sale price — to reflect how much less the flat was worth because of the neighbour.

Crucially, the court rejected the sellers’ argument that the buyers had lost only the chance to negotiate a lower price, which would have limited the payout. Instead it treated the harm as the full gap between the price paid and the property’s real value, and awarded the entire amount.

Silence can be deceit

The ruling, published in the court’s official bulletin and so setting a benchmark for future cases, is a reminder that under French law a seller’s silence can itself amount to fraud, known as ‘réticence dolosive’. A seller must disclose anything likely to weigh materially on a property’s value. A merely irritating neighbour would not meet that test, but concealing serious, abnormal disturbances does — and, as this case shows, a buyer who later uncovers the truth can keep the property and still recover what they overpaid.