We take a Hunt 29 to the top of the Bay of Fundy and through the treacherous Reversing Falls in Saint John.
By Peter A. Janssen
Well, this was a surprise. I'd never felt anything like this before, ever. A few feet to the right, a whirlpool was swirling; to the left, the current seemed to be going in several different directions. Although I was nudging the throttle forward to about three-quarters power, the Hunt 29 under my feet felt as if it was going to lose ground at any moment. The water under the hull was shifting unpredictably as if it was moving in three or four unrelated planes. I was where I wanted to be (although about 15 minutes later than I had intended) — the famed and potentially fatal Reversing Falls in Saint John, New Brunswick, at the very top of the Bay of Fundy. But at the time, I wasn't sure I wanted to be there at all. This was verging on being too weird and too scary. I pushed the throttle wide open, trying to regain some control and ride this out.
I had been planning this trip up the Reversing Falls for some time. The Bay of Fundy, which essentially separates Maine from Nova Scotia, is open to the Atlantic at the south. As it narrows at the top, it produces some of the highest tides in the world — up to 30 feet in Eastport, Maine, an old fishing community right on the New Brunswick border, and in Saint John itself. The Reversing Falls are just up the St. John River from the city; it's the longest river in this part of the world (450 miles long). When the river water rushing out hits the bay water flowing in at the narrow gorge called the Reversing Falls (and plummets into an underwater ledge at the same time), the resulting collision actually reverses the flow of the river, causing a violent surge of rapids and whirlpools. The only time boats can traverse the Reversing Falls is during a 20-minute period of slack tide when the water in the bay is even with the natural level of the river.
This seemed fine when we were planning; we (Billy Black, the photographer, and I) had a 20-minute window of opportunity. But then, just before we left, I came across a YouTube video showing three guys on a speedboat trying to make it up the Reversing Falls when the current was running hard. They made it maybe a third of the way up when their boat suddenly flipped up, turned over and was swept downstream; all three drowned … hmm.
But onward. On an early summer morning, Billy and I picked up the boat, a Hunt Harrier 29 with a single Volvo Penta D6 370 hp diesel, from Bill Morong. He's the president of Yachting Solutions (yachtingsolutions.com), the Hunt dealer in Rockport, Maine, who also runs a yacht service and restoration facility there and a new marina, Trident Yacht Basin, a bit down the road in Rockland. We left Rockland under a steely gray sky with the wind blowing on our beam at 12 or 15 knots. As we cruised east, however, the wind calmed, the sky turned light blue and the water became a pure, deep blue. We sped past the low, rocky Maine coastline at an easy 25 knots on one of the most beautiful days I've seen in a long time.
When we reached Campobello Island, where Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent his summers, we turned in, passed the small town of Lubec and went another five or six miles up to Eastport to refuel and spend the night. As it turned out, we should have kept going, cruising the 50 miles or so over to Saint John across the top of the bay while the sky was clear. The next morning, we ran into a fog bank so thick we could only see perhaps two boat lengths ahead. Instead of an easy 25 knots, we were creeping forward at a nerve-racking 6 or 8. Our 20-minute window of opportunity for slack tide was slipping away. We made it, barely. I maneuvered the boat up the S-turn leading to the Reversing Falls, hit the throttles to get to the top, turned around as quickly as I could and went back down, keeping the boat right on the edge of control. I was very happy to get out of Dodge.
Late that afternoon, after the fog lifted, Billy and I headed west across the desolate top of the Bay of Fundy. (We literally did not see a single boat going over or coming back, other than one Canadian Coast Guard cutter.) We pulled in for the night at the wonderful, laidback Canadian resort town of St. Andrews, where we absolutely crashed. The next day, after a breakfast stop in Lubec, our trip back was a repeat of the trip up — another gorgeous summer day, with the Hunt simply loafing along at an easy 25-plus knots. When we got back to Rockland, we hated to give the boat back to Morong. It had taken me through the Reversing Falls without missing a beat, and that's saying a lot.
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