Dipper Harbour to Caton's Island in the St. John River

August 3, we planned for coffee and breakfast under way this morning and threw off the dock lines leaving Dipper Harbour as soon as we had enough light to see going out the harbour. We had a flood tide with us and made very good time; so good in fact, we had to slow down so we didn't arrive too early. We were going to leave the Bay of Fundy today and enter the St. John River system. To do this, we need to get through Reversing Falls at the mouth of the St. John River, and it has to be timed perfectly, as the currents are strong with the outgoing river fighting against the strong tides of the Bay of Fundy. You don't want to be where these two meet anytime other than slack tide. At slack tide, you only have to worry about the outgoing river currents. We had already checked the tide tables and knew when the slack tides would occur for the day. We took in the sights along the New Brunswick coast seeing a few dolphins and seals, but still no whales. Maybe next year Suzanne will see some. I did see a large sunfish at the surface, but he wasn't there long. We entered the busy port of St. John passing tug boats, ferries and ships waiting to enter to offload their cargo. There are a few checkpoints throughout the Bay, which we radioed in letting Fundy Traffic know our location. We thought we would venture in a bit to look at the state of current nearing Reversing Falls, and it was still fairly strong, as expected. We turned the boat around and headed over to the Market Slip, near downtown to tie up till we reached slack tide. We sat tied up for an hour and a half, sunning ourselves with a freshly brewed coffee waiting patiently. Confident we were now at slack tide, we got underway again and passed through Reversing Falls with smooth, reasonable currents flowing out of the river. Now through our last bottleneck of concern, we focused on the next plan of checking in with Canada Customs. The Royal Kennebeccasis Yacht Club is a check in point for Customs, so we tied up on the fuel dock and called them on the cellphone to arrange someone to come to us. While we waited, we topped up with fuel and water, pumped out the holding tank and tidied up the boat. We were not allowed on shore yet till we had met with Customs and had been cleared in. A couple hours later, we had a guy and a lady agent show up to process us. The lady was great, but the guy had an attitude you could see in his walk as he strode down the dock. He went inside the boat, with us all on the dock, and stayed inside for a half hour, coming out and bringing me aside to question and give me a hard time for the next while. So much for welcome back to Canada. We had nothing we weren't allowed and eventually he let me go, as we were in compliance with everything. We were not happy to hear we had to quarantine for 14 days, even though we were all fully vaccinated. Fly or drive in and there was no quarantine, but by boat it was the same as if we had not been vaccinated at all; government logic. I'd worked for the government long enough to not bother trying to reason with them.

The 2 agents left and we did as well heading up the river to get a little closer to home. There was now strong winds blowing astern all the way up Long reach. We headed to the protected water in Caton's Island, where there are always available free mooring balls. New Brunswick has lots of mooring balls that are help yourself, as long as you know where to look. There were not a lot of boats here today, no doubt due to COVID as many boaters never bothered to launch, and even less were out using them. During this trip, I had still been fairly grumpy after dealing with the agent with attitude. I had started to calm by now and we had supper in the cockpit with a few beverages. We were happy to be cleared in and in New Brunswick, only a few hours from my own mooring ball in Douglas Harbour.