And now, the rest of the story > Boating vacation down the St. John River leaves traveler without a port to call home

Planning can be the success AND failure of a vacation.

My summer vacation last year was planned by a magazine article. Someone did it before us and wrote about it. That should have been a warning. There was no Paul Harvey following with … the rest of the story. We survived and perhaps benefited from the experience, and, yes, we’re going to do it again, but where was Paul Harvey when I needed him?

To spare you from making the same mistake, here are my warnings:

Boating is a good vacation, if the boat is big enough, if it doesn’t rain, if you have the charts you need, and if you don’t think that boating in Canada will be better than the United States.

The St. John River was our destination. What an adventure! Hundreds of miles of navigable waterway, lakes, bays and an outlet to the Bay of Fundy.

After nearly a week on the Canadian river, I can now say it doesn’t appear the Canadians are ready for recreational boating. It exists, but apparently not in the volume that it does in Maine.

Fuel stops need to be planned whether you are traveling upriver or down. They tend to be few and far between. Sailors obviously have an advantage here. There may be an advantage to beginning the trip in St. John as opposed to Fredericton. Grand Bay has several marinas for gas, supplies and information on what can be expected upriver.

Starting at Fredericton, however, we didn’t have that advantage. And lacking any pertinent tourist or travel information about the river, we had only our charts to show us the way south. We did acquire a brochure-type recreational map. But we quickly learned their idea of harbors and our idea of harbors are quite different. We arrived in one well-marked harbor on Grand Lake to find about a dozen sailboats on moorings and not a sign of life anywhere else. No dock. No store. Certainly, no supplies.

The single marina on the Jemseg River appears to be the only fuel supply for boats anywhere in the vicinity of Grand Lake. They also offer friendly hosts and fellow travelers, along with great fried chicken.

Our camping spirit and preparations were our salvation on the river. Equipped with a campstove, a well-stocked cooler and cooking equipment, we often found ourselves cooking at dockside. Perhaps you saw us cooking breakfast on the dock at Eastport. That was after a nearly three-hour trip out of St. John at daybreak to make the midtide on the reversing falls of the St. John River.

Timing is everything at St. John. Traversing the falls only occurs during about a one-hour window at midtide, between high and low. All the accommodations for recreational boaters, fuel, slips or moorings are on the upper side of the falls. St. John harbor is strictly for large commercial shipping with one exception — the dock just below the Hilton and opposite the Coast Guard station. Visitors to the city can tie-up at the dock for walking tours into the city, but the best treat may be just above the dock — outdoor cafes and entertainment just outside a large indoor mall.

The city of St. John makes a striking picture just before sunrise. But our first venture through the tricky falls and into the commercial harbor was met with heavy fog and rain, a very frightening experience when you don’t know where you’re going or what you will find. That part of the adventure only proved that the falls are easily negotiable whether in rain or fog, at day or night.

At daybreak, the Bay of Fundy began as a mirror, but developed into a light chop as we headed west. Coastal New Brunswick remains a shadowy mystery, because we lacked information on accommodating harbors.

Despite the lack of advance information, Canada is always one of my favorite places to visit — by car and boat. The cities appear clean and fresh, the people genuinely accommodating and the beauty of the countryside can equal, and best, Maine’s finest.

The St. John River has been called the Rhine of North America, and with good reason. Long, wide stretches of waterway make cruising an endless possibility. Picturesque farmland, crops and animals, meet the river all along the way. Small villages, cable ferries, and steep mountainsides bring to mind picturebook scenes from Europe. Indeed, there is a very European atmosphere about traveling in Canada, a slower pace of life, and more emphasis on leisurely pastimes. A good example is a walking path along the river at Fredericton and the numerous, but abandoned, public docks along the waterway. Much of the travel across the St. John and its tributaries is done by cable ferry, a quick five-minute crossing. Boaters are forewarned to stay well-astern of the ferries to avoid entanglement in the cable that pulls the ferry back and forth.

Crossing the international border on Passamaquoddy Bay is an uneventful process, unless you count the light fog that hid Campobello until the last possible moment. Without the lighthouse at East Quoddy Head emerging from the fog as a recognizable landmark, I wonder where we might have docked. However, early morning Eastport was a bustling place, and we quickly found the right place to turn in our Canadian cruising pass. (The pass is available at the border crossings going into the country.)

Down East Maine and the stereotypical reticence of the natives is no exaggeration. While we have our accommodating Mainiacs, there is a noticeable difference in recreational boating in fishing country vs. Penobscot Bay. Docks at most locations are for fishermen first, travelers second. Still there’s a lot of coastline to see down there and a lot more wildlife — seals, whales, and birds.

It was an adventure — even the dog had a good time.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Seekins family, mom Brenda, dad Steve, daughter Shelby and even Nugget, the dog, made the 330-plus mile trip down the St. John and back to Maine, as far as Jonesport in the summer of 1992. Deteriorating weather canceled the remainder of the trip back to Penobscot Bay. And in the past two weeks, they were off again, maybe — only maybe — finishing the final leg of the trip this year.