An early start meant that we were on the beach at Eastbourne at 10:30am, having coffee and croissants and sausage baps outside the local café next to our launch point. After a short safety briefing on the beach, we launched from the shingle beach into absolutely no waves.
That was a surprise as the weather forecast had been very bad, even up to the time we arrived. Wind was forecast to be NW F4 with F5 gusts and 0.7m waves every 5s. It really was about F2 with F3 gusts, with very small waves. However, we knew from previous experience that a NW wind meant that the Eastbourne side of Beachy Head was sheltered and we would experience stronger winds around the headland.
We had both the sun and the flow with us, so we zipped passed the Eastbourne Pier with its golden domes.
A short stop on one of the beaches exposed at low water to correct some footpegs and we were off around the reef at the headland. Passing the reef, two seals accompanied us with one following us to the lighthouse.
The lighthouse itself is on the sea with huge white cliffs as backing. At Beachy Head the fast moving clouds gave a searchlight effect to the cliff face, as the sun alternate shone through and was blocked by the next cloud.
The wind also had picked up as anticipated and although we paddled about 3km into the wind, our pace started to drop so that by the time we reached Belle Tout (the second lighthouse) we really weren’t making much progress.
Liza, our leader, decided to cut our losses and we headed for lunch at one of small beaches under the cliffs out of the wind, that were exposed at low water.
After lunch we headed back to the launch point with the increasing flow. The clouds also thickened and we saw in some places that it looked like the clouds came down to the sea.
As we passed Eastbourne pier the clouds in the distance turned very black. As we started to load the boats on the cars, it started to snow!
