Friday 3rd April: Pevensey - Seaford (13 n.mi.)

Today, my VHF died. Actually, this is my wife's set - mine still being in the custody of Kent police, rotting away from salt corrosion and water ingress, if not already defunct. This replacement set has already been repaired once, thanks to the sterling efforts of friends and former colleagues in procuring spare parts, so its demise is particularly galling. I suspect that salt has crystallised behind the keypad.
Anyway, today's report to the CG has to go via phone, as must the negotiation with Eastbourne Port Control for access to the harbour, where I spent a fruitless hour hunting for a replacement set. VHF is a really useful tool - for getting weather forecasts, understanding the intentions of other vessels and port authorities, and in emergency. For emergency use, I also carry a GPS-enabled 406 MHz PLB (a sort of baby EPIRB), but that is a single-purpose device with its own advantages and limitations. (Actually, this is a replacement PLB, the first being thought to be still in the tender care of Kent Police...)

So, off I paddled, now well behind schedule. The chalk cliffs rise dramatically south-west of Eastbourne, and today their crests were wreathed in writhing mist. Most atmospheric. The foghorn on Beachy Head Lighthouse sounded its fluty C every 30 seconds. Now, I don't hold with the traditional association of musical keys with emotions, as I think this is a hold-over from the days before equal temperament, but maybe if Trinity House re-engineered the horn into, say, a B flat major chord, it might do something for Beachy Head's macabre reputation. For me, the horn just set up today's earworm - an elaborate improvisation on a simple ground bass, to the rhythm of the paddles. An earworm is a sign of a good paddle: no concerns about navigation, no difficult sea-state to contend with, no undue fatigue or worries about a tricky landing.

The Seven Sisters passed to starboard, if anything even more beetling than Beachy Head itself. This must be one of the best paddles in the South-East, even if I was now fighting a slight easterly-setting tidal stream.
I beached at the western end of Seaford and once again struggled to heave the boat up a steep shingle bank, to camp at the site south of the railway line.