If you want to tweak your sense of adventure, think about cruising Downeast next summer, the real Downeast, the part that starts at Northeast Harbor, Maine, which is about as far as most people ever go. But if you leave Northeast Harbor in your rearview mirror, you’ll primarily be traveling on your own through cruising grounds that have changed little since John Smith first sailed there in 1614, passing spruce-covered little islands, rocky shoreline fronting dark green forests, and countless little coves and inlets. You won’t have to look hard to see ospreys, bald eagles, puffins and, if you’re lucky, whales. You’ll also see some lobster boats, but far, far fewer than anywhere this side of Northeast Harbor. And you’ll have to navigate carefully. The tides, particularly once you go past the Gulf of Maine into the Bay of Fundy, are ferocious, the worst in the world, reaching 53 feet on occasion.
I cruised there several year ago with Billy Black, the photographer, on a Hunt 29 from Yachting Solutions in Rockport, Maine. We went all the way up the Bay of Fundy and ran the Reversing Falls in St. John, New Brunswick, one of the better trips. We stopped at Eastport, Maine, the easternmost point of the United States, with a small commercial fishing fleet. It’s opposite Campobello Island, where FDR has his vacation home. Then we ran across the top of the Bay of Fundy to St. John, rarely seeing another boat of any kind, until we ran into heavy fog and couldn’t see anything.
Since St. John has some commercial ship traffic, we called the harbor’s Vessel Control on our VHF to make sure a container ship wasn’t coming our way, and they gave us a heading to keep us out of the way. On the way back, we went up Passamaquoddy Bay to the small Canadian resort town of St. Andrews, a true gem that’s worth the trip all by itself.
The story below is a good overview of that part of the world. Take a look:
https://www.tourismnewbrunswick.ca/See/BayOfFundy.aspx
