The Rampion Wind Farm array became fully operational in April 2018, positioning 116 turbines across a thirteen-square-kilometre zone four to eight miles off the Sussex coast. Each Vestas V112 turbine stands 140 metres tall at hub height, its three blades sweeping a 112-metre diameter, generating enough electricity to power roughly 350,000 homes. The array was the first offshore wind farm visible from the English Channel shoreline between Kent and Hampshire, a deliberate siting choice that balanced marine traffic lanes, seabed geology, and grid connection capacity at the Bolney substation forty miles inland. Brighton boat trips to wind farm sites depart Brighton Marina between eight in the morning and mid-afternoon, covering the seven nautical miles to the southern turbine perimeter in thirty to forty minutes depending on vessel type and sea state. High-speed ribs maintain sixteen to twenty knots in flat conditions; slower catamarans and sailing yachts tack west toward Shoreham before turning south, extending journey time but offering steadier platforms for photography. The turbines rotate at twelve to nineteen revolutions per minute under standard wind load, producing a low hum audible from two hundred metres downwind. Marine traffic regulations prohibit vessels from entering the five-hundred-metre exclusion zone around each tower base, where scour protection rock armour stabilises the monopile foundations driven twenty-five metres into the seabed. The offshore environment supports a recovering ecosystem. Grey seals haul out on the turbine platforms during pupping season; harbour porpoises use the array as a feeding corridor during herring runs. Cable burial trenches created artificial reef structures that now host spider crabs, edible crabs, and juvenile bass. Skippers report increased sightings of common dolphins within the array perimeter since 2021, likely tracking mackerel schools drawn to the hard substrate. The Met Office maintains two LIDAR stations on platforms R06 and R09, collecting wind speed and wave height data transmitted to the National Grid control room in Wokingham. Weather dependency governs all departures. Operators enforce a Beaufort scale threshold of Force 4, cancelling trips when sustained winds exceed thirteen knots or when wave height exceeds one metre at the outer harbour wall. Visibility below one nautical mile also triggers cancellations. The prevailing south-westerly fetch can build swells of two metres within an hour during autumn frontal passages, making morning windows more reliable than afternoon slots. Shared excursions bundle offshore transit with coastal landmarks — Volks Railway terminus, the skeletal remains of the West Pier, the chalk headland at Saltdean — creating ninety-minute circuits that return to Brighton Marina before tidal flow reverses at Shoreham Harbour entrance.