The Reversing Falls

The Reversing Falls
Originally uploaded by rosailither.

We spent a couple of days in St Andrews, a tourist spot with Scottish ancestry if the tartan in the shops is to be believed.

From there to Bliss Harbour for a night surrounded by nothing but fish farms. Dave got chatting to one of the fishermen, who told us there were 33,000 salmon in just this one bay. They keep them in pens for 18 months as they mature, during which time each pen gets through a ton of fish food per day! On closer inspection by dinghy, we could see the fish jumping in each pen, and noticed that the fish all seemed to swim in an anti-clockwise direction.

A full day’s steaming took us to the city of St John, halfway up the Bay of Fundy. This is home to some of the biggest tides in the world, up to 50 feet, so you have to time your passage carefully for favourable currents. We spent a couple of days looking around St John itself, one of the oldest cities in Canada. Streets of lovely brick houses in the uptown area date from the late 1800s when a huge fire destroyed about two thirds of the old (wooden) buildings.

The Reversing Falls occurs where the St John river (450 miles long) empties into the Bay of Fundy through a narrow rocky gorge. The outgoing stream passes over an underwater ledge and clashes with the incoming tide, causing a boiling series of rapids and whirlpools. There are two 20-minute periods of ‘slack tide’ a day when the river and sea levels are equal, allowing boats to safely navigate the Falls.

After negotiating the Reversing Falls without incident , we headed up the St John river. This is navigable for nearly 60 miles and passes by lush green fields, maple and other hardwood trees and nesting platforms for ospreys. This being Labor Day Weekend (officially ‘the last weekend of summer’), lots of boats were out and about making the most of the good weather.

We joined up with a flotilla from the Martinon Yacht Club who convinced us to moor overnight with them in a tiny creek off the main river. The entrance was barely wider than our boat and obviously not as deep as we got stuck on our first attempt. An additional blast of power pushed us through the soft mud into the deeper water inside. Some of the other yachts also needed a push with a dinghy to get through the entrance. The effort was worth it for a charming anchorage and a sociable evening, not to mention the tasty lobster rolls.

The next day we headed upstream again to Gagetown and met up with a flotilla of three boats from another yacht club further up the river. We all had a look around each others boats and in the evening we were treated to tea, cake and a slideshow of the Bahamas, where one of the boats regularly cruises. The morning brought grey skies and rain so we all went ashore for a hearty Canadian breakfast, then before weighing anchor Dave was given a parting gift of an electric tennis racket/mosquito killer - now his favourite toy!

A combination of the rain and the fact that the trees were beginning to turn colour made us decide that this would be the furthest point of our trip north. We motored back down the river and passed through the Reversing Falls again in the evening. This time wasn’t quite so uneventful, despite traversing at the recommended slack time. We faced 6 knots of incoming tide which funnelled through the bridge causing powerful whirlpools and eddies. This is the only time we have used full power on the trip so far, and Dave was still hard-pushed to keep control of the boat, which was pushed perilously close to the rocks on either side of the narrow gorge. We were both mighty relieved to come out safely on the other side.