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Battle Abbey is the supposed site of the Battle of Hastings – William set it up a few years after the battle to mark the his victory, with the high alter in the Abbey marking the spot where Harold died. The visitor centre is new and impressive but there seems little evidence that this was the actual spot of the battle!

The fight lasted all day, of the 14000 men who fought that day, 7000 were killed. It is not a big field so the bodies must have piled high!

Harold’s fundamental problem seemed to be (according to all the helpful signs about the site) that he did not ride a horse and William did! Therefore William could see what was going on and Harold couldn’t – although later on his vision was further impaired by an arrow in the eye!

The Saxons occupied the high ground and waited, while William was at a disadvantage having to go up the hill to Harold across a bog! He must have had a bit of a Grand Old Duke of York moment! This is place where the Saxons first broke the Norman attack, however it turned into a disaster as the Saxons chased the fleeing Normans. William with the advantage of height on his horse surrounded them with his cavalry and killed them all!

Then later on in the day, after both sides had hacked themselves to a standstill, William thought he would be a good idea to try and repeat the fall back and run trick – and true to form the Saxons fell for it, they were then  surrounded and massacred! I am beginning to get trust issues about those Normans.

That was the beginning of the end for the Saxons.

The Abbey was second largest in the country, we thought that these were the Abbey buildings themselves, it turned out to be only the latrines, no wonder the grass was nice and green!

Being such a large Abbey,  it eventually fell foul of Henry viii and he promptly dissolved it. The new owner selling off the surplus materials they did not use on their own new home for building the town. And all around the town you can see houses build from monastery stone!

So where was Harold killed? Well there were two different locations offered on the site itself with the smart money on the roundabout at the top of the road!

 

 

Sunday 18th June 2017 Eastbourne.

Not being able to sail, due to no wind and no batteries we decided to explore the area and discover a bit about William the Conqueror and the Norman invasion. Our first top was Norman’s Bay and Cooden Bay. However despite the name it would appear that no Normans landed at Norman’s Bay. This is because at the time the coastline went to Pevensey and Pevensey Castle was in fact a harbour!

 

Next day we visited Pevensey Castle. It was here that William, the then Duke of Normandy actually landed with his fleet in early September after being delayed at Dives on the Normandy coast due to bad weather in the Channel. At the time Pevensey was a major port surrounded by a 1000 year old Roman curtain wall! By then they were not in great condition but did provide some defensive position for his troops so he made it his base.

The castle itself was really interesting. It was build by one of William’s relatives and incorporated much of the Roman walls. It has all the usual castle-ly refinements, moat and gatehouse with portcullis and hole for pouring boiling hot oil. It also includes two dungeons! One of which was half full of water, not realising this I promptly stepped into it right up to my middle in true Dr Foster style!

The castle was besieged 4 times – lost two and won two, the last and successful defence was by the Mistress of the house while the Lord had gone off on a jaunt somewhere! The castle is absolutely stuffed full of stone Trebuchet ammunition – every nook and cranny seems to have these things fished out of the moat – testifying to lots of vigorous beseigings!

The castle keep was unusual as it has 7 towers and could be argued that it has been used for defensive purposes for almost 1000 years as it became a Pill Box in 1940!

The moat seemed a popular place to dump stuff as they found two cannons in it! one of which is here and one is in the Tower of London. They were made for Elizabeth 1 by the iron foundries on the Sussex Weald which apparently were very good at guns! Apparently these had a range of 2000m with reasonable accuracy.

We called in Tim, who has the local chandlers and seems to be the ‘go to’ man in Sovereign Harbour for anything batteries related! He came down to the boat and had a look at our set up, tested both domestic batteries and pronounced them dead! 

He then disappeared down into the hold to test the starter battery, this was fine and in good health, however by then I was feeling a bit uneasy as it was an original battery too and at 7 years old could fail too. The prospect of a duff starting battery in the middle of Kiel Canal is not a happy thought so I had that one replaced too.

So we have three new batteries coming on Wednesday, we could not get Banner, which was the original equipment fitted by Bavaria but have got Endurance Marine ones which are a bit bigger but should do the job. 

Problem solved? Well, we hope so, we don’t think that the smart charger is at fault here as the engine starting battery is in good condition. It was just old age causing the Cells in the domestic battery to fail so not holding their charge properly which meant that the charger kept on charging, ultimately boiling the batteries! Tim spend a happy hour or so tracing the wiring and it looks like a bit of adjustment had been made by the previous owner. Tim also figured out why we could not get shore power without the batteries in place and the charger charging, not really a problem until our recent battery problems. Not being able to isolate the charger meant it just kept on cooking the batteries. Apparently it is not necessary to charge then all the time, so we will have a switch installed so we can charge the batteries when we want to! Tim will also remove the the inverter, a gizmo for changing 12v to 240v, in 6 months we have never used it and therefore it should go. It also canes our precious batteries. So in a ‘Carruthers moment’ (see Riddle of the Sands) its going over the side!

So, I have had any expensive lesson in battery management! 

1. They don’t last forever.

2. Smart chargers are not that smart.

3. Check them regularly to make sure they are happy.

4. You need different types of batteries for the domestic supply, ones that supply a steady current for a long time, whereas starting batteries need to supply lots of amps in a big lump! 

5. Even sealed batteries need good venting – and our setup is good. Well done Bavaria! 

6. Two big 135 a/h batteries full of boiling sulphuric acid is alarming!

Back in Sovereign Harbour on Friday night we reconnected the shore power and switched on. Everything seemed normal, the Quick branded smart charger seemed to be working fine and the battery gauge on the instrument panel said it was charging at 14 v which seemed normal for quite flat batteries! 

It seemed to be running ok but quite busy! Going to bed and sleeping late till 9 am the cabin had a strange acrid smell and slightly sulphurous. The battery charger was busy working away and on hearing a strange bubbling sound from underneath the port side cabin benches I lifted the seat base to find the slightly alarming sight of one of the large ‘house’ batteries boiling its electrolyte! Immediately I switched everything off and disconnected shore power! Both batteries had now started to boil, certainly the middle cell where they touched the other batteries. 

Venting the boat in case of hydrogen  gas it took 6 hours before the batteries were cool enough to move the worse and most damaged one onto the pontoon! Both batteries seemed well vented so I am sure we were in no danger of a gas explosion!

The engineer is coming on Monday so hopefully we will find out why! I hope the starter battery has not been damaged.

Well we seem to be managing just fine without electricity, we cannot sail until we get it fixed as we have no navigation lights or instruments. 

At least we have gas, lanterns and a kettle!

We had been following our #PredictWind weather app most of the week and there was a real chance that Saturday could be a good day to make for Dover and if Sunday was calm, then on to France!  

Wind direction was perfect, just a bit light that’s all. We would still make about 4.5 knots, which seems to be Grace’s normal speed! No real plan but packed the passports and some Euros just in case! 

The passage plan from Sovereign Harbour at Eastbourne was made, the first leg from the safe water mark at the mouth newly dredged and rebuoyed channel would be 090 for 10 M to our waypoint off Hastings 50 47′.2 N and 0 35′.8 E .

The second leg from Hastings to Dungeness Point is on a bearing of 064 for 16 M to the 2 yellow buoys about a mile off the point. 

The final leg is to small craft channel at Dover on a bearing of 046 for 18 M. At a distance of around 45 M and 10 hours it would have been our longest days sail yet!

But……. and there is always a but!

Bandanas! Just bought these on Amazon and they are much nicer than sweating under a hat and the protect the top of my ears.

Oh dear! Not a great start……leaving our berth at Brighton we clipped the stern of Coval, an 80 year old racing yacht on the pontoon next to us snapping her rudder stock. The yacht is a live-aboard that is undergoing a step by step renovation after many years of neglect. We moored up on an nearby berth…..but not nearby in lightening does strike twice and exchanged details. The owners tell me they are going to crowd fund the project to complete the restoration. It is easy to forget the amount of momentum at 8000kgs that Grace can carry, even when she is barely moving!

Getting underway, uneventfully again we were joined for the trip by one of my brothers in law, John. We departed Brighton at 1030 with our log reading 3824 nm and 689 engine hours. The tide was falling but the marina has been recently dredged so we had no concerns about when we needed to leave.

Brighton                            Eastbourne

HT                                        0714                                   0658

LT                                        1331                                    1353

HT                                       1950                                     1940

At 1045 we were changed course on to 180′ for 1.5 to 2 nm. At 1055 we set both full mainsail and genoa in a nice F4 westerly, changing onto 110′ for 15 nm towards Beachy Head.

John at the helm with Brighton in the Background.

Our new MOB station with an inflatable danbuoy – just chuck it in at the casualty and it inflates to 2m with a flashing light. Then stop and deploy the floating rescue line returning in a loop back round towards the danbuoy.

Seven Sisters looking from Birling Gap

The lighthouse at Beachy Head in line with the Belle Tolle lighthouse

Throughout the morning the wind build to a F6 SW with a deep swell. We first took in the genoa, then reefed the mainsail to about 50%. Grace coped with the waves easily.

A deep following swell with waves up to 2m.

Clearing Beachy Head we changed course onto 023′ towards Sovereign Marina. Despite being heavily reefed we benefitted from a favourable tidal stream and our SOG was 6kts!

Sailing past Eastbourne, the golden dome on the ‘end of the pier’ building made a great seamark. Sovereign Marina is about two miles beyond Eastbourne Pier. The approach was easy to identify by  the Martello tower. Martello towers can be found all across the former British Empire, from Canada to the West Indies. They were a standard design for a fortified gun platform. The ones at Eastbourne were build in the early 1800’s.

The Easterly Martello tower at Eastbourne

At the red and while striped Safe Water mark we contacted the marina on CH 17 and were advised that due to dredging all the buoyage had been removed. We should approach on the leading light on 258T, then follow the channel round and enter the lock. In the outer harbour there was a large Dutch dredger  which we successfully avoided.

The locks are very large and took 6 boats. We rafter up against another Bavaria 32…..which was smaller than our 32!

John brought along a small GPS tracker and we could follow our actual route…..it was surprisingly close to our planned route.

A nice still evening in Brighton as we sit on deck and plan for our trip to Eastbourne tomorrow.

On Saturday 3rd June we are taking Grace from Brighton Marina to Sovereign Marina at Eastbourne. I have been working on the passage plans, it’s should take about 6.5 hours to cover almost 25 miles. High water at Brighton is at 0703 so we aim to leave between 1000 and 1100 which should give a minimum depth of about 2.5 m.  This means that we will reach Eastbourne on a rising tide with high tide at 1940 to give us plenty of depth for our approach to the outer harbour.

My Passage Plan

Leaving Brighton on a bearing of 175 for approximately 2 nm. We will change on to a bearing of 110 for 17 nm. We will have a 1 knot tidal stream with us until about 1300  which will then be against us until  about 1900. We should be on a broad reach in a F4 until about 1300. Sailing past Newhaven and Seaford we will come to the Seven Sister and then Birling Gap. We should get a fantastic view of these geological wonders.

 

Seven Sisters

Birling Gap looking towards the Severn Sisters

At Beachy Head we will change on to a heading of 030 for approximately 5 nm and avoiding the shoals off the cliff. 

Beachy Head

Sailing past Eastbourne, we pick up the Marina entrance from the Martello Tower to the west side and then turn on to 260 at the safe water mark approximately 1 nm off shore. To make matters more interesting there is a large dredger in the entrance and the buoys removed…..such fun! Unusually the vhf Marina channel is on 17 rather than the usual 80!

An early start on Saturday 20th. We had said our farewells and were out through the lock by 7.20 am and into the Channel. The weather was perfect and the forecast was good and we had all day to make Brighton.

An early start….

Through the lock and off to Brighton!

Goodbye Chichester!

After about 45 minutes we were over the Bar and on to West Pole where we put up the sails, motor off and changed course to 130 towards the Boulder buoy.

Approaching the Bar Beacon. 

West Pole…it always starts from here.

We made great progress and reached the Boulder buoy, a distance of about 6.5 nm in just over an hour.

Passing Boulder buoy off Selsey Bill.

At Boulder we changed course to 090 and sailed on a broad reach for 6 nm to the East Borough Head buoy. It has a bell that rings out which we could not hear it until we were well past it.

East Borough Head buoy in the background.

On passing the East Borough Head buoy we changed course again to 075 for Brighton. As we were on a very broad reach and a rolling sea we rigged a gybe preventer, it is only a line from the boom end and towards the bow and round the forward cleats and back to the cockpit. As the genoa was not pulling well and the wind was up to a Force 5 we took it in to make it a bit more comfortable!

Gybe preventer – it gives us a lot of comfort for downwind sailing!

We sailed past Littlehampton, Worthing, Shoreham, Hove and finally Brighton. It was easy to see 10 miles off because of the “donut on a stick”!

Looking towards Hove and Brighton. 

The entrance to the Marina was difficult to see so we sailed past a little way and watched a couple yachts go in and out. There was a deep swell so we took in the sails but it was too dangerous to put out the fenders. That would have to wait until we were in! 

Going in was a bit exciting as our entry coincided with a fishing boat which I let lead the way. It is a narrow channel that sweeps first to port and then starboard but it is well buoyed……and has a big dredger and barge moored in the middle of the fairway! 

We were helped with our lines by Hamish, the pontoon master and we tied up to the visitor pontoon for the night before moving to a long term berth for the next few weeks in the morning .

 

Grace safely berthed.

My completed log with a total run of 38nm.