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.