August 1 & 2 — Days 24 & 25 — Chance Harbor to the Royal Kennebecassis YC after passing over the Reversing Falls — 27 NM

 Lene and I, with her two brothers, had viewed the Reversing Falls when they were at near full ebb flow. This was when the cruise ship we had taken from NY had visited St. John and the date is clear in my mind because we were watching with horror the destruction in New Orleans wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The power of the churning ebbing white water over the falls was an awesome sight.

The Guide Book, it’s chartlet shown here, and everyone we talked with said it is easy as long as you time it perfectly to get to the falls at slack tide — the short interval between when the waters stop rushing one way and begin rushing the other. So timing was the key and anxious me would rather be too early and have to wait a while than be to late and have to wait six hours.  Crossing the falls other than at slack would be impossible against the tide, which is moving faster that the fastest speed our boat can go. Whether with or against the flow would involve loss of the ability to steer and a high likelihood of being swept onto the rocks that line the shores. The amount of time needed to get to the falls on time is purely a factor of the distance to the falls and the speed of travel. We called Fundy Traffic on VFH channel 12 to confirm and planned to get there at 2:15 with a wait, circling, until 2:31. (This is two hours and twenty five minutes after high tide at nearby St. John. I’m not aware of why two places so close together geographically could have tide events so far apart in time, but it is true.

We had planned to leave at 10:45 but I left at ten with Everett’s help,  and there was no wind so we were motoring. But at idle speed, with tidal flow, we were making more than five knots over the ground — more than the four planned to get to the falls on time. So we sailed, with just the small jib, to slow down, and did do, to 3.5 knots, until the wind got stronger and we were going too fast again. So some zig-zags, off course, ate up the time. I even intentionally untuned the one sail we were using to slow us. Out in the Bay of Fundy, there were several large merchant ships on anchor

We kept sailing most of the way to the falls, furling the sail and. turning on the engine about a mile before. We entered the harbor approach, passed the City of St. John to starboard (looking out) and the container ship loading dock to port.

Then under the big blue bridge, partly seen on the right side behind the container ship, a left and a right and we were there. These photos were taken from land on the lay day. No photos in the falls, my concentration was elsewhere. We saw just ripples and a boat had gone before, so we went through about five minutes early, and easily, though we saw large and small whirlpools in the water. All the planning however imperfect, had turned the anxiety into wasted emotion. 

Five miles later we were on our mooring at the RKYC. It was founded in 1894 and has among all classes of membership, more than 400 members, about half with boats and most all of them kept at their docks. We are on one of their few guest moorings. Their dock-centered focus means no launch service, but a very roomy dinghy dock. A lovely modern bar and social area, but they serve food only every other Thursday night. I wonder why, given how many cars in the parking lot. They have Committees but their Trustees, by and large, do not chair the committees. 

The first thing I saw was another Saga 43, “Ishmael I”, hailing port Toronto, but we were unable to connect with its owners. Ashore, asking where the supermarket was, a PC offered to drive us there. We cabbed back. Blogging in the evening. A cold night, perhaps reaching fifty degrees. I finally got a long overdue haircut.

And I got finally got the river charts that I had craved, at the chandlery across the street from the YC. We took public transit into the heart of town; you call and a small van comes and takes you to where a larger bus waits and takes people into the city. One thing about cruising to anchorages is that on nights we stay aboard, we get in very few steps as recorded by our cell phones, though Lene has figured out how to do the stretching type exercises aboard, squats, push-ups, etc. But lay days are walking days and we put in 10,500 steps.

We visited Container Village, a new waterfront commercial venture built entirely from shipping containers selling foods and gifts. It is supposed to be a feature; but we are from NY.

We discovered a pamphlet describing three walking tours of the city, and took two of them — the Loyalist and the Victorian tours.

They took us to the local sites and told a bit of the history of the city, which, like San Francisco and Nantucket, was half destroyed by a fire, St. John’s  in 1877. 

Dinner at East Coast Bistro, a fine dining experience, the place owned and run almost exclusively by women. Then a cab back to the Club, because public transit shuts down at 6:30 and plotting of riverine courses and distances to points upstream.