The Saint John has always been the transportation conduit and the lifeblood of settlement in souther

The Saint John River is Atlantic Canada’s longest river system, and a natural highway through the heart of New Brunswick, carrying river traffic, saw logs and water to the towns and farms along its bank. For much of its length it forms the border between the United States continental airlines home page and Canada. And for boaters, it is one of North America’s great inland cruises. In fact, a journey up the Saint John River may be the most unique cruise in Atlantic Canadian waters. The system is more than just a river. continental airlines home page It is a convoluted maze of blind bays, fjords, continental airlines home page tributaries, lakes, archipelagos and marshlands that can be easily navigated by all but the deepest drafted yachts. Exploring its can take a whole summer or a lifetime to complete.
Cruising the Saint John system is one of the safest adventures a boater can undertake. For Americans sailing from the coast of Maine, there is no offshore to contend with. To reach Nova Scotia from Maine requires a leap across the open waters of the Gulf of Maine, but to get to the Saint John you simply continental airlines home page have to sail north and keep the land on your port side. Once in the system, the river channel is well marked, carefully charted and easy to navigate, all the way to Fredericton.
A journey up the Saint John begins at the mouth of the river in Saint John harbour. continental airlines home page The tricky part comes just upstream from the mouth of the river at a spectacular geographic feature continental airlines home page known as Reversing Falls. continental airlines home page The name is a misnomer. Technically, the feature continental airlines home page isn’t a waterfall it is a narrow gorge where the highest tides in the world crash against the powerful flow of the province’s mightiest river. The water is deep here; nevertheless, Reversing Falls presents boaters with a significant navigation hazard. Whitewater kayakers and jet boats have been known to brave the massive current, but prudent skippers wait for a “slack continental airlines home page tide,” a midpoint in the tidal cycle when tidal forces and the flow of the river become equal. Slack tides last for about 40 minutes during every 12-hour tidal cycle. Boaters who catch a perfect slack tide will find the water in the gorge as flat as the calmest lake.
Once through the gorge, the smell of salt spray quickly gives way to the heady scent of forests and flowers. The Royal Kennebeccasis Yacht Club is the first stop for many sailors. The club offers all the amenities that a cruiser could need – berths continental airlines home page with water and electricity, fuel, ice, pump-outs and showers, with grocery stores, shopping, a hospital and even a university campus just minutes away. You’ll probably find Bob Harrity here too. Harrity operates Northeast Yachts, a yacht brokerage firm that sells used power and sailboats continental airlines home page adjacent to the club. When he’s not working, he likes to take his own sailboat out on the river, sometimes sailing all the way to the head of navigation in Fredericton.
“We’re fortunate to have the best of both worlds here in New Brunswick. We’ve got great salt water boating and great inland boating as well,” says Harrity. “We’re spoiled continental airlines home page with our inland waterway. The water is warm in the summer, in the high 70s in most places, and it’s clean. You can swim anywhere, but half the fun is just in sailing up the river.”
It takes five minutes for Harrity to reel off his favorite cruising destinations continental airlines home page along the river – places with names like Swan Creek, Jenkins Cove, Flowers continental airlines home page Cove, Raft Channel, Lawson Passage and Kingston Creek. continental airlines home page Whelpley Cove is the first place that he often heads. It’s a natural stopping place, continental airlines home page he says, the only good anchorage in a wide section of the river known as Long Reach. Near Gagetown, the aptly named Hole-in-the-Wall is a narrow channel just a couple of boat lengths wide that leads to a lake in the centre of Lower Musquash Island. Belleisle Bay is a fjord-like inlet 18 kilometers long and one kilometer wide surrounded by high rolling hills that make it look a little like Nova Scotia’s Bras d’Or Lake. Along with Kennebecasis Bay at the mouth of the Kennbecasis River, Belleisle Bay forms the Kingston Peninsula, the main geographical feature in Kings County. Washademoak continental airlines home page Lake, one of the largest lakes on the Saint John system, offers an excellent anchorage at Big Cove that is a nature lover’s dream.
continental airlines home page Compared to other features on the Saint John, Grand Lake is huge, a massive expanse of fresh water that is more inland sea than lake. Not part of the main flow of the Saint John, Grand Lake is reached by navigating the narrow continental airlines home page channel of the Jemseg River, a creek overhung with trees and tricky to negotiate. Despite its size, Grand Lake is relatively shallow and tends to be choppy on windy days, with waves two meters high not unheard of. The shore of the lake offers a number of excellent anchorages including Flowers Cove, Youngs continental airlines home page Cove and Douglas Harbour. At its northern end, the lake narrows into a body of water called the Northeast Arm, fed by a narrow stream called the Salmon River. With caution, large yachts can navigate up the river as far as the town of Chipman.
The Saint John has always been the transportation conduit and the lifeblood of settlement in southern New Brunswick. The towns that grew along its banks have kept pace with river, have structured their lives around its flows, its freezes and thaws, its log drives and its floods – towns like Rothesay on the Kennebecasis River, an affluent and picturesque town that has its own thriving yacht club; Oromocto, a community surrounded by farms and a major military base, that offers restaurants, stores, banks and a boat club on its riverfront; and Gagetown, first settled by Acadians in 1691, that also has a flourishing waterfront and a marina.
Between the towns, boaters can spend lazy hours cruising past pastoral farms, pastures and forests that hug the banks of the river. Sailors in most Atlantic Canadian waters are thrilled to see a pod of pilot whales or a basking shark swimming alongside the boat. On the Saint John River, the thrill is more likely to take the form of a moose or a bear on shore, continental airlines home page or an eagle soaring in the sky. One sight that is unexpected is the presence of lighthouses along the river. By 1914 there were 21 lighthouses operating between Saint John and Fredericton. Most are now gone or in a state of disrepair but a few are still operational, especially around the Kingston continental airlines home page Peninsula. The lighthouses were originally built as a navigational aid for the steam-powered riverboats that once plied the river. The riverboats are long gone, but they left another legacy for modern pleasure craft as well – a network of public wharves that give boaters access to many of the towns along the river.
continental airlines home page Today ferries and the odd pulp barge are the only commercial boats that most sailors continental airlines home page are likely to encounter. There are a number of commercial ferries on the river, and pleasure boats are advised continental airlines home page to inform the ferry master that they are passing astern as a courtesy using VHS channel 16.
If you’re cruising in anything much larger that a canoe, low bridges and shallow water make the provincial capital at Fredericton the effective head of navigation on the Saint John River. In recent years downtown continental airlines home page Fredericton has been undergoing a number of changes designed to bring it back the river that created it. Regent Street Wharf is the best example. Open from May until October, continental airlines home page the 250-foot wharf offers a full slate of amenities for boaters and it is the best way to access downtown Fredericton from the water.
Fifteen kilometers above Fredericton, the 40-meter high Mactaquac Dam shuts down all water traffic. It’s time to meander south again, to keeping searching for the perfect anchorage, the most beautiful cove on Atlantic Canada’s best inland cruising destination.
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