PREFACE.

THIS book is intended to meet an actually existing want. So far as we know, no series of Guide Books to the Coasts of Great Britain and Ireland has yet been published.

That the amateur sailor would be thankful for such assistance we know from practical experience. Several times in the course of our many cruises the necessity of these guide books has been impressed upon us. The vagabond spirit, if generally dormant, is present in most healthy men, and the trammels of that monotonous humdrum which civilisation imposes upon our existence are broken through occasionally, men flocking down to the sea in ships more throngingly every year. Yet most of these men know little or nothing of the grand possibilities, from a sailing point of view, of the smaller harbours and creeks which crowd along our coasts.

To obtain the information needful for writing a series of handbooks of a kind to be of any real use, demands a good deal of time, and involves some considerable risk to property; for such a book as a guide to amateur sailors calls for personal adventure as well as patient research.

Whatever faults this little volume may possess-faults of which we are more or less dimly conscious, and which will flash upon us with more painful brilliancy when kind and candid friends point them out-we feel sure no one can reckon among our shortcomings that we have trusted to second-hand information. To see if what we were told was true, we have risked our

property, and, as we were often cautioned, perhaps our life, though we certainly do not think this latter assertion is correct.

A boating book of this kind should be written by a man who has himself just bumped ashore, and afterwards has found the right way to the proper channel. . Such a man learns where the dangers lie. We have bumped ashore a good many times, simply, of course, for the benefit of those who will profit by our experience.

On these occasions our only guide was a chart, and as an instance of how unreliable this species of guide can sometimes be, it will be sufficient to cite two facts.

One chart purported to be corrected to 1891, yet a lighthouse was shown coloured red, as if it still existed, although, as a matter of fact, it had ceased to exist for at least thirty years.

On one occasion we were obliged to run to Rye for shelter. We had never been there before, and did not even know exactly where it was. There was a fresh wind from the south-west, with a falling glass, and the tide was setting down strongly round Dungeness. Trusting to finding a pilot lying off the entrance of what our chart marked as a considerable harbour, we put up the helm and eased off our sheets, for we were well round the "Ness." The tides were at the neap, and it was almost high water. Steering vaguely for the low shore, we began to get uneasy as we drew rapidly in. We shoaled to 9ft. and were yet a mile out. Still no signs of a pilot, nor any vestige of a harbour, only a long, low, shingle shore. Behind, rising ground, a cluster of old houses, an ancient church, and blue distance. So much for the future; the present was a curling, tumbling, piling sea, yellow and frothy, a lifting prow, and then a plunge, stretching sails, straining sheets, and bubbling wake.

astern.

We had a book of sailing directions, and this is what it said: "The approach from the bay is very intricate and difficult, especially to sailing vessels, arising from the sand-banks and the tortuous course of the channel."

Good Heavens! and we were already in 9ft. of water, and where was the channel?