Saturday 4th April: Seaford - Shoreham by Sea (15 n.mi.)

Awoke to grey drizzle and the 0520 Shipping Forecast and Inshore Waters Forecast on BBC Radio 4 LW: SW 4/5 becoming variable 3 later...
Used the back entrance of the campsite and the nearby sailing club's handy lengths of scrap conveyor belt to make today's launch much easier than last night's recovery. Scrupulously returned the lengths of belt to their original positions. The vis was down this morning (at times, the IPTS lights of Newhaven harbour could be seen only at about 300m), so I floated around off the north-eastern breakwater, waiting for the Transmanche ferry to exit astern and make her turn. Put in to Newhaven, crossing the channel at No.1 ro-ro berth to beach the boat on the slip in the North Basin, right opposite Russell Simpson, chandlers, where a new VHF was procured. Lost an hour while we waited for the battery to charge, then back to the slip where a sturdy young man engaged me in conversation. He had done a bit of paddling when he was "in the military", having spent three weeks paddling round the top of Scotland. Three weeks is fast for that trip, and when challenged, he admitted that, yes, it was with special forces, bivvying on the beach and getting a food drop every 3 days. Apparently they had no particular training for this trip, in some of the most treacherous and fast-moving of British waters. Their instructor had apparently just decided "it would be a good idea." Somehow I find it faintly reassuring that our politicians need go to no great lengths to create enemies for us, so long as they can employ that instructor.
From Newhaven, the original plan was to make Littlehampton - a long day, but with a couple of rest days planned afterwards. Paddling past Brighton, I entertained myself by working hard to overhaul a yacht ghosting along in light airs and sunshine half a mile ahead. Then the wind arrived, the yacht disappeared into the distance, and soon I was battling both the tide and a SW 5-6, the forecast conditions being augmented by a sea breeze. The long fetch soon built up a 1m chop [1], and the adverse wind and tide turned the paddle into a test of stamina. Matters were not helped by a confused sea state aggravated by the wash of passing gin palaces. Preferring not to risk a surf landing onto the steep beach in these conditions, I slogged on to Shoreham-by-Sea with the intention of cutting the trip short there. Foolishly, I hadn't prepared pilotage notes for this haven and, approaching the harbour mouth I seemed to be deadlocked for access with a merchant vessel further offshore. Raising the port control on the new VHF, a disjointed and bizarre exchange took place, in which the other party clearly wondered what type of large merchantman was proposing to blockade his little harbour at no notice. Only when I had given my length ("17 feet") and beam ("umm, 21 inches") was there a long pause, followed by an assurance that I was too tiny to need any sort of clearance at all.

Shoreham harbour was delightfully quiet, and I pulled up the sailing club slip just in time to cadge a shower as the Saturday afternoon dinghy sailors were clearing up. The cavalry arrived for the only planned stop of the circumnavigation, and we dined in style at the excellent local Italian restaurant.

Notes:
[1] Estimates of sea state from a kayak are notoriously prone to exaggeration. One's eyes are about 70cm above the waterline, so when the horizon starts disappearing, the seas are only averaging around half a metre. Beyond that, you start timing the proportion of the wave cycle for which objects remain in view.