Itinerary

 

• October 19-30: Boston-Montreal (Oceania's INSIGNIA)
  
  
• October 30-31: Montreal (Hotel Nelligan)
  
  
• November 01-03: Quebec City (Le Chateau Frontenac)
  
  
• November 04: Home

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OCT 19: Boston and Beyond

We left the house at noon and were aboard the ship by 1:30. This was so weird for us compared to other cruises where, at a minimum, we had to travel to Florida. Do not even get me started about the flights for one beginning in South Africa and ending in Singapore. Equally strange was that almost no one else was checking in when we got to the cruise terminal. Apparently, the congestion we expected had occurred earlier in the day, primarily people who had come from away.

Our stateroom was ready, so we unpacked and then explored the ship. As we wandered around it was apparent that the ship had gone through a substantial refit since our last time aboard her.  

Our latest adventure begins.

About Oceania's INSIGNIA

We have been on Oceania ships several times.  The last trip we took on INSIGNIA was from Capetown, SA to Singapore.  The blog for that trip can be found at... https://zatosgin2016.blogspot.com/  

OCT 20: Bar Harbor, Maine

After picking our way through the islands under cloudy skies, we dropped anchor off Bar Harbor at 0840.

Royal Caribbean's SERENADE OF THE SEAS beat us here.

Around 10:30, we headed to shore. Since we were anchored out, this involved boarding one of the ship's tenders. This is always a cozy process.

An interesting fact is that in November 2022, the residents of Bar Harbor voted to limit the number of passengers off cruise ships to a maximum of 1000 per day. I am unsure how that reconciles with the number of passengers aboard INSIGNIA and SERENADE OF THE SEAS, but I will leave it to others to worry about such discrepancies.

Once ashore, we just wandered around. There are many more gift shops than the last time we were here. In fact, the tone of Bar Harbor is more honky-tonk. It nevertheless retains its old charm if you look for it.

   

And, of course, Sherman's endures here, the oldest store (of nine) of the oldest bookstore in Maine.

I admired this establishment's preparedness should the food be drastically less than fine.

The throng of people having fully dispelled the last vestiges of being in a quaint Maine community, we returned to INSIGNIA for lunch and a nap.

Lunch was good. The nap was better.

We watched Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park cloud over and then clear all day.

On the subject of clouds, they became heavier and more ominous throughout the afternoon. It did not bode well for our time in Eastport tomorrow. After getting underway that evening, we encountered another harbinger of what could be ahead.  As soon as we were in the open ocean, the ship disappeared into heavy fog.   

OCT 21: Eastport, Maine

We docked in Eastport, Maine, at sunrise, or at least statistical sunrise (0650). With 10/10 cloud coverage, it was impossible to tell.

I checked at 0430 to see where we were on my chart app, and seeing we were still well offshore, I rolled over and went back to sleep.  At 0600, Pam looked out the window while I checked the chart. The chart said we were entering the channel. Pam reported thick fog. We went back to bed. We were up at 0630 to watch the final leg of the approach in shades of blue and gray.

This proves once again that it is never a good idea to stand next to a working line (i.e., one that has a lot of tension on it). Two line handlers decided it would be clever to wrap the messenger line around the bollard and then attach it to the back of a third guy's truck. This would make it easy to pull in the heavy docking line.

The truck started forward. The line got tighter and tighter. There was a sound similar to the crack of a whip. Thankfully, no one was hurt when it broke.

Remember what it was like to be sent to sit in the corner as a kid? This is the Eastport equivalent for the two stupid line handlers. They can only get off if a boat comes to pick them up.

An interesting fact about the pier we were tied up to was that it was one of the deepest on the East Coast. It is 85 feet to the bottom.

What a difference an hour makes. This was the view at 0750. 

With the distinct uptick in weather, over the shipwide system came an announcement that we would be leaving at 1700 rather than 2100 this evening because of an approaching storm. A check of the weather map showed...

There was definitely more red in the image than I would have liked. Its approach was not exactly a surprise.  I'd been watching it for several days, hoping it would find a more easterly route to follow.

With the forecast for the day showing deteriorating weather, we went ashore as soon as we anticipated things being open for business.

On the right side of the picture below, Eastport had its Little Mermaid thing going on.

Our first destination was the Tides Institute & Museum of Art. The sign on the door said it opened at 10:00, but it finally arrived at 10:15; there was still no sign of life. Pam asked a local storekeeper why. The woman indicated that in the Eastport way of life, the opening time was more of an intention than a commitment.

We decided to walk about 1 mile to the Stone Ground Mustard Museum, but we played it smart this time. When Pam asked in a shop where the mustard was sold, she was told the museum was closed while they built a new plant. We bought some mustard from her and crossed that destination off our list. 

We decided our wisest course of action was to wander around to see what we could see, so we did and had a good time doing it.

Our friends aboard MASCOT and PERFECT ARRANGEMENT saw it up close and personal several years ago. We asked about seeing the famous Old Sow Whirlpool. We were told that was only possible from a boat and at specific times in the tidal cycle.  

By the time we got back to the ship. This guy's had turned gray again.

The ship arrived near low tide. It was almost a flat walk down the gangway to the pier.

It finished its ebb late morning and started coming back in. As the tide came in, the climb up the gangway to the ship became steeper, eventually forcing them to install a ramp to the gangway. The full title range (i.e., from low tide to high tide) is over 18 feet.

The gangway was disassembled at 16:30. The lines were singled up at 1655. We were underway right on the revised schedule of 1700.

We went down the channel under heavy clouds and rain, reducing almost everything we could see ashore to dark shapes.

Shortly before sailing, I took another look at the midnight location, a predictive weather map to determine the midnight forecast location of the storm and associated information. It appeared that given the wind direction and a slight easterly shift in the eye of the storm, we might not get hammered too badly as we moved along the line that I circled.  (Is this what mystery authors call building the suspense?)

One thing that I gleaned from this forecast was that had the storm come through 24 hours later, it would have caught us transiting from St John to Halifax, making for a very lumpy ride.

OCT 22: St. John, New Brunswick, Canada

Our night at sea having been singularly anti-climatic regarding vessel agitation, we did a pre-dawn entrance into St. John harbor, docking at 0700. 

Having set our clocks to Atlantic Time today, with no meaningful shift in longitude or latitude overnight, sunrise was 7:49 versus 6:51 Eastern Daylight Time yesterday. 

We awoke to rain, which the forecast said would be with us throughout the day. We pulled out the appropriate gear for our day ashore.

Today we went on an organized tour titled St. Martin & The Bay of Fundy.

We started at Rockwood Park. Like most last-minute changes in itinerary, it was a time filler. In this case, we were supposed to go to the city market, but the market was closed on Sunday. 

And so we drove through the park in the rain, having things of nominal interest pointed out to us if we could see them through the steamed-up windows. We did see some foliage. Somewhat strangely, because it did not quite fit with the park experience, we had a woman come aboard to talk about geology, not the park's geology. I mentally wrote it off as part of the time filler.

note the Canadian maple leaf in the middle

It was a good move to put the filler first because the rest of the tour was more interesting than it.

Our next stop was the Reversing Falls. Reversing falls are rare. These falls are the most cited location where the incoming tide reverses the flow of a major river feeding into the sea, which drives saltwater a long way upriver. 

Here, the river narrows, greatly accelerating the water velocity. The only time a boat can transit this area is about 20 minutes at the turn of the tide.

Leaving the Reversing Falls, we headed up the coast to St Martin.   It was as a whole a pleasant one-hour ride. The scenery varied, as did our ability to see it depending on the rain's intensity and the fog's opacity on the windows.

St Martins started life as the village of Quaco, so that name pops up everywhere, including UNESCO Heritage site Quaco Head Light at the mouth of the inlet.

It looked drab on a rainy day with much of the foliage gone.

We continued to The Caves Restaurant where we had a good cup of fish chowder, then did some limited exploring down to the low tide mark.

Not coincidentally, two large caves were at one end of the stone beach in front of the restaurant. These had been bored by the sea and were devoid of any significant content, so We did not walk over to see them. Instead, we looked around the beach, noting that all the stones were round and smooth. This resulted from them being tumbled by the rush of the huge tides.

Back on the bus, we started back, only going a short distance to a small Harbor called Irish River.

The boats had a clever way of staying upright while sitting in the mud. 

Envision the letter "U". A vertical line is attached to one support. A horizontal line connects the first support to a second support. Attached to the second support is the other vertical line. Using the vertical lines on both ends of this array, the supports are lowered into the water and positioned along the hull to provide the needed support.

From here, we returned to the ship, wiggling our way through the section of St. John known as Uptown to see some of it. This included a view of the closed City market that was supposed to be on the tour. The ceiling is the thing to see because it looks like an inverted boat hull. This is because the market was originally built by both builders.

As we headed back aboard, just outside the marine terminal, we saw a group of shops built out of shipping containers. Had the weather been nicer, prowling them for a while would have been fun, but not today.

We departed on schedule at 1500, the ship needing the help of a tug to get it turned around.

The time change that kept us in the dark during our entrance into the harbor this morning worked in our favor this evening with sunset at 6:27. We were able to see the entire transit from the pier to open water in the Bay of Fundy.

Ironically, it was not particularly interesting. Also, it had started to rain again, discouraging me from wandering around on deck and taking pictures.

As we proceeded down the Bay of Fundy towards the open ocean, we began to encounter some significant swells that were likely a residual effect of the storm that rushed past to the east of us yesterday. It was announced on the ship's PA system that passengers should anticipate some motion this evening.