A journey up the Saint John River is a sweet reward for the effort of getting there.
Issue 144: May/June 2022
“My phone scolded me for taking only 548 steps yesterday,” I confessed to Alex, my wife.
“Yeah, but what it doesn’t know is that we also sailed 62 brutal miles up the Bay of Fundy, changed time zones, learned the metric system, navigated a waterfall that looked like a ski slope, and became the first U.S. citizens to sail into Atlantic Canada in nearly two years,” Alex said. “That phone of yours is focused on the wrong tile in the mosaic.”
Alex steers up the foggy Bay of Fundy geared up for the typical cool weather.
We were enjoying our morning cockpit coffee klatsch on the Saint John River under a sunny Canadian sky. The abrupt juxtaposition of this climate with the fierce Bay of Fundy—only 5 miles away on the other side of the infamous Reversing Falls—is what makes New Brunswick such an interesting place to sail. Thirty-foot ocean tides are replaced with almost no tide on the river. Fifty-fivedegree seawater is exchanged for 75-degree freshwater. Bobbing seals are replaced with jumping sturgeon. Fog gives way to sun. The Saint John River is everything that the Bay of Fundy is not.
Canada is tantalizingly close when we cruise Sundance, our 36-foot Morris Justine, in her home waters along the New England coast. Fellow sailors back from New Brunswick have regaled us with stories of the Reversing Falls and the charms of the river beyond. Our favorite books aboard, A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast (by Hank and Jan Taft and Curtis Rindlaub), and The Cruising Guide to the New England Coast (by Robert and Roger Duncan and Paul and Wallace Fenn) both feature a chapter on New Brunswick and its Saint John River. If they decided this was worthy for inclusion in their books, we figured we should try to include it in our cruising plans.
Our timing finally came together during the summer of 2021. We found ourselves Downeast on August 9 when Canada reopened its border to visiting recreational vessels after the COVID-19 closure. The pandemic was still raging, and additional safeguards were in place at entry ports, but a bit of advance reading had us feeling prepared. We sailed across from Eastport, Maine, to Welshpool on Campobello Island, Canada, carrying proof of negative COVID tests, our vaccination cards, passports, the ArriveCAN app on our phones, a Q flag, a Canadian courtesy flag, and a dangerously empty liquor locker.
The flat water and easy navigation in the Saint John River made for some lovely sailing.
Each crew member entering Canada may legally bring two bottles of wine, or 40 ounces of liquor, or 24 cans of beer. For many sailors, that sounds more like breakfast options than adequate supplies for a cruise. To add to the quandary, Canada regulates the sale of alcohol carefully and purchase locations are few and far between—especially without a car. In an effort to follow the rules, we begrudgingly buried much of our excess rum at Roque Island as we approached the border. X marked the spot on our treasure map for future retrieval.
Ironically, our most challenging pre-border-crossing projects—getting COVID tests and downsizing our rum collection—went unchecked by the two uniformed, gun-toting, Canadian Border Patrol officers inspecting Sundance upon arrival. In fact, they bubbled with excitement, gleefully informing us that Sundance was the first foreign recreational vessel to legally enter Atlantic Canada since the start of the pandemic. Our passports suitably stamped, we were free to explore the Bay of Fundy and the Saint John River at last.
Falling Upriver
Pandemic or no pandemic, the Bay of Fundy has the largest tidal range of any place on Earth—as much as 30 feet at Saint John and even more up the bay. These tides produce powerful currents. For our daylong trip from Welshpool to the Saint John River (we had the hook up at sunrise), a 15-knot breeze on the quarter coupled with a favorable current should have provided for a comfortable sail, right? Nope!
Gagetown at dawn. Our red dinghy, Heidi, rests in the foreground with a fishing boat in the distance.
The current churned up a huge field of racing waves that looked to be competing in a sprint to Saint John alongside us. There was much jostling and splashing and rolling. Frankly, it was rude. As the bay narrowed, the competition only tightened, producing a confused and boisterous sea.
It was foggy too. The hottest summer on record was unfolding over the continent, but out on the Bay of Fundy, we were bundled up in hats and jackets. Even Bill the boat dog looked cold. A Cruising Guide to The Maine Coast references ship reports indicating that the Bay of Fundy is foggy 30% of the time. I suspect that 30% is also known colloquially as “summer.”
What separates this foggy, wild bay with the lush, warm Saint John River is the short but formidable stretch of water called the Reversing Falls. This narrow, rocky gorge 2 miles upriver from the sea manages to keep the vast majority of the bay’s tidal range out of the river, but the inevitable maelstrom at this geological bottleneck is a hydrological wonder of the world.
At high tide, the bay is as much as 15 feet higher than the river. What water does manage to force its way through the narrow gorge does so with much ferocity (despite its name, the falls look and act more like Class 6 whitewater rapids than an actual waterfall). At low tide, the flow reverses and the river dumps water back into the bay with equal intensity.
At around mid-tide, there is a short, miraculous period when the falls stop falling and a boat can safely navigate through in either direction. This magical 10-minute period of slack water arrives approximately 3 hours and 50 minutes after low tide and 2 hours and 25 minutes after high tide as measured at Saint John. (Atlantic Time Zone, don’t forget!)
Bill the boat dog sits in the dinghy while Sundance sits peacefully anchored in Colwells Creek.
Timing is always important when traveling Downeast and in the Bay of Fundy; at the Reversing Falls, it’s everything. Sail through too early and you might lose steerage and get rolled by the current and white water. If you wait too long to set out, you won’t make it against the current, which quickly builds to as much as 15 knots in the opposite direction.
Cruising guide instructions call for circling in a cove in an elbow of the river just downstream of the falls known as “The Bedroom.” The idea is to tentatively stick your bow out into the current to gauge its strength while at the same time have a look over the edge of the falls to gauge the height of the water. All the while you must maintain speed and steerage in the swift current so you can dart back into The Bedroom if you don’t like the look of the falls. I’m not sure how this cove got its name. With tight quarters, strong current, cold fog, and forbidding rapids only yards away, it seems like a particularly bad spot for a nap or a bit of romance.
The concept of gauging the height of the falls didn’t really sink in until we got there. It was like standing at the top of a ski slope, planning a descent. The water was as white as snow. Black-diamond sailing felt like a bad idea, and I thought, “There is just no way this going to end well.”
The cruising guides warned about the possibility of the current sucking us into Split Rock, which protrudes dangerously out toward the middle of the gorge. Yet we were also cautioned not to stray too far from the middle, or our mast could hit the low shoulder of the fixed bridges that span the gorge. The promised 80-foot clearance at slack water was plenty for us, but the bridges arch down to less than half that height at both banks.
So, stay in the middle, but watch out for the rock. Don’t go too early or you could get rolled; don’t hesitate too long or you’re in for a six-hour wait in the tiny, not so romantic Bedroom to ponder your next try. Towering over all were the red lights of the massive Irving Pulp and Paper Mill pulsing in the fog as the plant relentlessly tended to its work with a sinister plume of smoke and a never-ending groan.
There was so much to white-knuckle over, and yet…the clock finally ticked to slack tide, and the slope flattened out on schedule. The snowy-looking water melted to a smooth ribbon, and off we went. In flat water, passage was simple. The bridges and rock were quickly behind us. Five minutes later the whole thing was over, and we were happily sailing up a beautiful sunny river.
Sundance rests on a mooring in Gagetown while cows amble along the shore behind, Alex swims beside, and Bill observes from the rail.
Solitude and Scenery
The Royal Kennebecasis Yacht Club (RKYC), 5 winding miles upriver from the falls, is the hub for sailing in New Brunswick. Club members and staff were excited to finally have an American boat back for a visit, and we were welcomed warmly by all.
Ellie at the RKYC gas bar (local speak for fuel dock) explained the lay of the land on a wide range of topics as we topped up with diesel. A city bus could take us the 4 miles into the center of Saint John, and Ellie told us where to catch it. She extolled the pleasures of swimming in the river and assured us that water quality was excellent throughout. That said, she also told us the Canadians were a better hockey team than the Bruins, at which point she lost her mantle of authority.
After an adventurous day walking the delightfully cosmopolitan and European-feeling city, we ventured upriver into the countryside. Near the mouth, the riverbanks loomed majestically tall, steep, and wooded, the beaches cobbled with large, sharp stones. But upriver, the scenery flattened out. Grassy marshes proliferated along with beaches of soft pebble and banks of mud. Bucolic riverside farms, complete with cows, horses, and hayfields, were common neighbors in the anchorages.
With good wind, the flat river water made for excellent sailing. On our upriver trip, a wide, straight, 15-mile section known as The Reach lived up to its name, providing an excellent opportunity to set our asymmetrical spinnaker. At other times, the river turned narrow and winding, and we motored as a result.
The beach at Roque Island, Maine, where Chris and crew buried some treasure before crossing the border.
The fleet of cable ferries that carries cars and passengers across the river at multiple locations presented an interesting obstacle. These ferries pull themselves back and forth across the river on a fixed cable. We had to hail them on VHF 16 to request permission to cross, since when the ferry was underway, the cable at its leading end was pulled up to or near the water’s surface. All crossings waited until the ferry was safely landed on one bank or the other.
Deep and well marked, the river is navigable for all of the 80 miles from Saint John to Fredericton. It is also rich with branches, tributaries, and connecting lakes, some more navigable than others. The apogee of our cruise was a four-day jaunt up the narrow Jemseg River, under the Trans-Canada Highway and into the 12-mile-long Grand Lake. Bald eagles outnumbered boats, good anchorages were plentiful, and hazards to navigation were few. It was a strange thrill to feel our seagoing sailboat reaching free and easy across a freshwater lake in the Canadian wilderness all alone.
Typical of Canada, the Saint John River impressed us with its vast space and the solitude that afforded. We have a habit on Sundance of extending Bill the boat dog’s morning trip to the beach into a longer row. Most river and lake anchorages proved to be well suited for this sort of simple pleasure. We often had coves to ourselves or occasionally shared them with a single seaplane in for some camping and fishing.
A few local boats were out and about on the weekend, but midweek—even in August, the peak boating season—few people or boats shared the river with us. Perhaps it was because foreign yachts were just starting to return to the river, but more likely it was because Canada is just a roomy place.
When a rare opportunity to dine ashore presented, it felt precious and tasted that much better. Yip’s Cider on The Reach had a killer view of our boat on the free mooring. The Old Boot Pub in Gagetown offered fresh Molson on tap. A takeout shack called Hunters One Stop in Douglass Harbor stood out with sublime poutine and burgers.
An unusual food offering presented itself on the downriver portion of our trip at Colwells Creek, an offshoot of the main river. We anchored easily in the soft mud bottom and hung to the current in the narrow creek nestled up against farmland and cow pastures. It was a hot, lazy day with much rowing and swimming for all.
At the landing, a sign advertised fresh meats at Elke’s Farm, 1.2 kilometers up the road. I arrived, shopping bag in hand, just as the farm stand closed from 4 to 5 p.m. “for supper.” A rest under the shade of a tree in the farmyard quickly turned into a nap. The next thing I knew, the farmer was gently waking me, and we launched into a long conversation about meat.
She eventually sent me on my way with a bag full of three different kinds of sausage and a large package of marinated schnitzel. Portion control has never been one of my strengths, and Alex was startled when I returned with much more than a reasonable quantity of provisions from the farm. It would be a meat-forward diet for us on the return trip back through The Falls and down the Bay of Fundy.
We delayed our return to Eastport, Maine, with a few stops near the border including a second visit to Campobello for a fascinating tour of the Roosevelt summer compound. My spontaneous and robust meat purchase at the farm could have led to us smuggling Canadian animal products back into the U.S. But smuggling begets smuggling, and one mustn’t fall down that hole. Instead, it was sausage for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Saint Andrews, our final Canadian port of call.
Canada had been good to us, and we were hesitant to lower the Maple Leaf from our spreader. Then we remembered that a benefit of a cruise to New Brunswick is that you inevitably return to Maine—another fine place to sail a boat, and an excellent place to dig for treasure.
Christopher Birch is cruising full-time with his wife, Alex, and dog, Bill, aboard their 1991, 36-foot Morris Justine, Sundance. You can follow their voyage at EagleSevenSailing.com
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