THERE'S not a sound to be heard nor a breath of wind. The sea is beautifully calm. The hustle and bustle of Brighton, Worthing and Shoreham are only eight miles away from where we float but might as well be a hundred. The sun is performing a son et lumiere against the Seven Sisters exclusively for us.

For now these are the perfect conditions to observe what we’ve come out to see. Of course in three years time these will be the worst possible set of circumstances for what is being created here.

Critics will stare out at the 116 monsters standing 450ft high but idle and declare they told us so.

For we are out getting a first up-close look at the energy giant E-ON’s Rampion offshore windfarm as it takes shape in this 27 square mile patch of the Channel.

Those sceptics say this is a £1.3billion mistake that as well as blighting the natural beauty of the environment and spoiling the view from our coast will never contribute to our energy needs in the way fossil fuels, fracking and nuclear can. Or wave and tidal power for that matter.

For the vagaries of the wind which make a sublime boat trip for us today could signal big losses for energy companies in the future. In theory if the turbines were permanently turning 400 megawatts of energy would be produced, enough to power 136,000 homes. In theory.

For now those debates are put to one side. We are out among the first of the turbine platforms rising from the sea bed 80ft below.

There’s only 17 of them with another 99 to go but already the sheer scale of this project is breathtaking.

The platforms more than a quarter of a mile apart look like the beginnings of a mobilising army ready to march across our horizon.

Our capacity to engineer new futures has astounded since our beginnings, the Pyramids and Machu Picchu testimony to a refusal to let the size of the task get in our way.

In its own way Rampion, named after the county flower of Sussex, is just as impressive. Consider the range of ingenious engineering techniques, vessels and science needed to pile these giants into the sea bed take the electricity their blades will produce carry it under the sea bed through our national park and into the National Grid.

At some point you might even wonder why they didn’t just give up (let’s leave the billions of pounds of profits out of this romance for a while) and try something easier.

Photographer Simon and I are out with husband and wife charter boat team Steve and Caroline Johnson on board their splendid Channel Diver vessel.

As we duck and dive around the bright yellow platforms a huge, specially-designed ship, the Nordnes is poised to begin depositing tons of imported boulders on the sea bed around the spots where more platforms will be pile-driven into the sea bed, once of course the sea bream have finished the spawning that has stopped all such work. The boulders will form a natural encircling barrier to protect the turbines against the ferocious current that sweep through the Channel.

Elsewhere more than 16,000 boulders are having to be moved by another vessel with underwater crane from the specific sites where the turbines will stand. It’s like a gigantic underwater game of draughts.

When the work begins again another ingenious jaw-dropping vessel MPI Discovery, a jack up ship, will plonks its legs on the seabed and drive the platforms down. It’ll have to be quick for the herring spawning season will arrive shortly after and halt work again.

As Steve guides the Channel Diver into the work site he has to be in constant communication with the guard ships, smaller vessels on 24/7 surveillance to ensure distance is kept from platforms and working vessels.

Two men are busying themselves on one of the platforms the sole examples of life we see out there on the day. When work resumes full pelt hundreds more will be here with reports that a hotel ship, again jacked up to sit on the sea bed, will act as a permanent base.

Our time out here is running short and as huge merchant vessels glide past now having to take new detours to Southampton and Shoreham Steve turns the Channel Diver for home at Brighton Marina.

We leave behind the start of something. The start of something that will change our seabed environment for ever, our horizon for at least a half a century. The start of something big and remarkable for sure. The start of a south coast revolution in greener, safer energy? That debate has only just started.