From Rye all the way across the bay to Beachy Head there is no haven, nor for the matter of that any difficulty for a small craft, save that the shore is very flat between Hastings and Eastbourne, and that, as one’s course takes one well out, it is not easy to fix landmarks. In good weather, of course, Beachy Head is a most prominent object all the way, and the light below it a perfect mark at night, but a very little haze is enough to make a yachtsman who is following alongshore get a mile or two in or out, especially as a strong tideway runs in between Pevensey Bay and the Royal Sovereign shoals. Rounding Beachy Head itself is easy enough work except when a strong northerly wind is blowing. On these occasions the Head, which is very abrupt, and the cliffs to the west of it, have a way of spilling sharp gusts unexpectedly down on to the water beneath. The present writer has seen a five-tonner under three reefs and a storm jib all but swamped within half a mile of the shore by one of these puffs, which are especially dangerous from the fact that there is no telling quite in what direction they will come. A full north-easterly wind on the starboard quarter as one rounds the head can give one a set-back in the shape of an unexpected gust coming round from right ahead out of Birling Gap. The only rule when the wind is blowing strong off-shore is to keep well out--irritating as it is to have to do so when one is making Newhaven, since every tack towards the outside means another mile to be beaten inwards against the weather. Some years ago it would have been necessary to warn the reader of a small reef which runs out from Beachy Head and is especially dangerous at high water, but a new lighthouse is now fixed upon this reef and the old danger no longer exists. Newhaven Harbour, as we have seen upon a previous page, is the most serious commercial harbour upon the coast. It is the only one before which there is not some considerable bar, and it goes without saying that small boats, such as we are supposing, can enter freely at any state of the tide; but it is by no means the easiest of the Sussex rivers for a small boat to _lie_ in. It has a heavy traffic both of trade and passengers, conveyed in large steamers along a rather narrow river, and until a dock for large craft has been constructed it [Illustration: OLD SHOREHAM BRIDGE] [Sidenote: SHOREHAM HARBOUR]