Beaulieu to Eastbourne 15th - 16th May 2013

"look here now while the wind sweeps the slipper limpet foreshore where pebbles lie like plovers eggs and scrunch up to the dunes" Above A Sussex Beach. Clive Williams

Allow me to claim my mind occupied with too many thoughts contemplating the journey ahead, this would soften the culpability of a near grounding in the river, not more than 15 minutes after starting - a depth alarm shattered my thoughts and saved Talisman from veering too far of course into the soft mud shallow. Later, going East towards Cowes under a full genoa, the heavy clouds from the earlier gale began to disperse and show occasional touches of blue sky here and there and a strong Westerly drove us forward at a great pace ,the boat hissing through the waves throwing them aside in her haste.

It seemed almost prophetic that a tanker leaving Fawley was named "Amelienborg" and so is called the Danish royal palace on Copenhagen which we knew so well from our previous Baltic adventure over twelve years before. She came at 12 Knots around West Bramble cardinal and in response to the deep vibration of her horn we respectfully veered off to keep well clear. Past Portsmouth busy as ever with ferries, hovercraft and dredgers bustling around, then slip through the buoyed gap in the derelict Submarine Net by Horse Sands Fort and on to Chichester bar beacon still with the wind building up following seas from astern. How true it is that the sea looks so much more a friend with the sun on it.

Over the Chichester sand bar laying a mile off the harbour entrance with 4.2 mtrs of water, more than enough with a fair sea running, then within the shelter of the natural harbour, there was a vacant mooring buoy - "its got your name on it" I can hear a friend saying in my mind. We settled there for the night, the wind dying fast and nature playing out the perfect evening, common terns arcing with stiff crescent wings around the boat, screeching their grating cries on and on while the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky was lit with red gold. Looking around the wide expanse of shelter and tranquillity I ried to imagine the Roman ships who came into this harbour almost two thousand years ago when it is believed they first made landfall on our shores and have left evidence of their magnificent civilisation for us to see today nearby at Fishbourne.

May 16th

One of the few early starts this day, a bright windless morning with the sun already golden on the sails at 6:30am and the tide ebbing fast. Out over the bar with 4 mtrs and falling but the easy going diesel purring oneards steadily. Hardly a ripple on the sea stretching across to the Eastern shores of the Island like a pale blue sheet of silk, lazily wafted by faint whirling zephyrs which appear from nowhere only to live for a moment then vanish. The hours pass, out around Selsey Bill, and Bognor pier standing iced white like a wedding cake against a hazy shore. Littlehampton to port where the River Arun races out, scouring the mud banks and long dead hulks stranded at the tide line.

Off Brighton from out at sea, a large military vessel rapidly closed us like a grey wolf, hungry and bristling - a warlike ship named Sentinel, a UK Border Agency patrol hunting for contraband, both human and material. A team of black clad, black helmeted young men with black accesories fixed to every available part of their outfits, sped alongside in an equally intimidating black power boat to satisfy themselves that we were who we appeared to be - though they turned out to be courteous, business like and thorough, then left us to enjoy the calm.

Eastbourne harbour is relatively new, say twenty years, and has been developed into a very large complex of marinas, harbour space, housing and everything the newly monied people could want including a retail outlet. A good stop over for the crossing to Boulogne tomorrow.