We sailed into Salcombe on Saturday evening, in a hired yacht of twenty-eight tons, after beating around the Start and Prawl against a sou'westerly wind and a strong spring tide. Now the tide off the Start has to be studied. To begin with, it does not coincide in point of time with the tide inshore. The flood, or east stream, for instance, only starts to run there some three hours before it is high water at Salcombe; but, having started, runs with a vengeance, or, to be more precise, at something like three knots an hour during the high springs; and the consequence is a very lively race. Moreover, the bottom all the way from Start Point to Bolt Tail is extremely rough and irregular, which means that some ten or twelve miles of vicious seas can be set going on very short notice. Altogether you may spend a few hours here as uncomfortably as anywhere up or down Channel, with the single exception of Portland Race. If you turn aside for Salcombe, there is the bar to be considered; and Salcombe bar is a danger to be treated with grave respect. The _Channel Pilot_ will tell us why:-- "There is 8 ft. water at L.W. springs on the bar at the entrance, but there are patches of 6 feet. Vessels drawing 20 ft. can cross it (_when the sea is smooth_) at H.W. springs, and those of 16 ft. at H.W. neaps. In S. gales there is a breaking, heavy sea, and no vessel should then attempt the bar; in moderate S. winds vessels may take it at high water." The bearing of these observations on the present narrative will appear anon. For the present, entering Salcombe with plenty of water and a moderate S.W. breeze, we had nothing to distract our attention from the beauty of the spot. I suppose it to be the most imposing river-entrance on the south coast; perhaps the most imposing on any of the coasts of Britain. But being lazy and by habit a shirker of word-painting, I must have recourse to the description given in Mr. Arthur Underhill's _Our Silver Streak_, most useful and pleasant of handbooks for yachtsmen cruising in the Channel:-- "As we approach Salcombe Head (part of Bolt Head), its magnificent form becomes more apparent. It is said to be about four hundred and thirty feet in height, but it looks very much more. Its base is hollowed out into numerous caverns, into which the sea dashes, while the profile of the head, often rising some forty or fifty feet sheer from the water, slopes back at an angle of about forty-five degrees in one long upward sweep, broken in the most fantastic way into numerous pinnacles and needles, which remind one forcibly of the _aiguilles_ of the valley of Chamounix. I do not think that any headland in the Channel is so impressive as this."