I don’t want to panic anyone, but as the following video snippet shows, the tide in the outer harbour here at Eastbourne’s Sovereign Marina is very high.

In fact, I’ve been here ten years, and based on the ‘A’ test, this is the highest tide I’ve witnessed.

As you walk along the Eastbourne seafront and look out to sea, you might notice an odd looking shape on the horizon, a shape looking something like a large cross.

In fact, that cross is a very important safety feature for any of the marine users navigating this part of the English Channel for its the Sovereign Light Tower.

Around about that point on the sea bed there’s a sand bank and at low tide it can be as shallow as about 2.5-3 meters.  That’s been a hazard to shipping over the years and has seen many ships run aground.

In olden days, to prevent this happening, there was an actual ship called the Royal Sovereign that had a lighthouse on it and was anchored on the bank to prevent ships running aground.

In modern times, the boat has been replaced by a more formal structure, which consists of a tower sticking into the sea bed with a helicopter platform and a lighthouse on top of it.

If you get a chance take one of the boat tours out there, it’s certainly well worth a look.

I don’t know about you, but when I go on holiday, particularly to a hot coastal resort, one of the things I always look forward to doing is hiring a Jet Ski and having half an hour of fun out at sea.

It’s a great liberating experience.  So, you might be mistaken in thinking that well, Eastbourne’s next to the sea.  I’ll go and hire a Jet Ski.

Well, unfortunately you might be a little bit disappointed.
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The annual visit of the dredger Sospan to Eastbourne Sovereign Harbour to remove the silt to free up the outer channel for boats to get a clear passage from the marina to the English Channel.

As you walk around the marina you may notice some Jet Skis sitting in a berth, normally, on a strange sort of flat plastic platform, which keeps the Jet Ski out of the water when it’s not being in use so it doesn’t get affected too much by the salt water.

Now, going back to probably the early 2000s when North Harbour wasn’t particularly populated and there weren’t many berths with boats in, you used to be able to do a kind of test drive around North Harbour, but couldn’t go very fast because there’s a speed limit, but you can still take it out and try it out, but now that’s more populated with boats and houses, the noise and the safety factor mean that that’s no longer possible.

So, whilst you can berth a Jet Ski in the marina you need to bear in mind is every time you want to use it, you have to go through the locks. This means you need to be very manouverable to make sure you don’t run into the other boats that are waiting for the locks to operate. So your Jet Ski needs to be one of the more advanced versions which has a reverse gear so that you can easily move back and forth as required by the Harbour master and fellow boat users

For the past few days the big motor yacht has been moored in the relatively safe waters outside of Eastbourne’s Sovereign Marina.

With a lot more Russians moving to the harbour the rumour mill has been going into overdrive about every mega-rich oil baron and his comrade.

Apparently this vessel was too big to fit into the marina so it moored where the tide wouldn’t cause it to run aground, unlike the sailboat in my earlier post this month ;-)

Just as car registrations now take place twice a year, it was felt that only having one official fools day in April meant that we didn’t have sufficient opportunity to do silly things!

For the past few days, the following sailing boat hasn’t moved (even when the tide has meant it could do). I don’t know whether the owner’s are just trying to save a few euros, or whether they may have experienced technical problems, but it’s made a different view from the promenade and always brings a smile to my face ;-)