Brighton to Eastbourne - Day 86

Brighton to Eastbourne - Friday 5th August 2011 - Day 86

Roerdean Girl's School

We left the marina pontoon at 10.20 and were out of the piers by 10.30 and heading east you soon see this magnificent building above the cliffs which is one of the famous schools in England.
With full main and genoa we were motor sailing along the South Downs and passed by Newhaven 1 1/2 miles away.  Off here, there was a lot of boats out fishing with rod and line, and two beam trawlers dragging nets along the bottom after prawns.

Seven Sisters

These are the magnificent white cliffs of the South Downs they are spectacular as seen from this view.  There is no vegetation growing on these as can be seen on others, so they must slowly be eroding away and not allowing anything to put down roots long enough to grow.  This is one of the reasons I wanted to do this project to see the magnificent British coastline from a different angle and with this, I was certainly not disappointed.

Beachy Head Lighthouse

This has to be one of the most famous lighthouses in the world.  It stands at the bottom of the 159 metre high cliffs and we were 1/2 mile offshore when we went by.  Another headland passed and the scenery magnificent as we sedately sailed by.  As we came around the corner the mainsail was dropped as we motored with genoa only.
Eastbourne's Sovereign Harbour was only another hour away and we entered the locks at 14.00 with other yachts and dive boats.  We were alongside our allocated pontoon within twenty minutes and were given a lot of information on their facilities by the friendly marina staff.  This was in sharp contrast to the other berth holders who we found were very unhelp, annoying and the first time we had come across this attitude.  Bill, who is from London, reckons it was because most of them appeared to come from the south east side of London, a surly lot.

This marina has newly built housing surrounding it, mostly flats with a large shopping complex, cinema, fast food outlets, bars and restaurants.  There was was no need to go into the centre of Eastbourne which was 2 1/2 miles away, as everything we wanted was in front of us.

Ashore to the Harvester marina pub which was full so popular, here we had an excellent meal of lamb steak and one of my favourite beers Old Speckled Hen on draught.  This ended off a magic day.