My recollection of an evening in a seedy north-east England pub frequently reappears as the time for a Wayfarer cruise approaches. Throughout the evening, a massive biker in full regalia sat beside me. We both left the pub at the same time. I expected to see him mount a powerful 650cc Triumph or a 750cc Norton Commando with high riser bars and chrome mudguards. Instead, he straddled an absurdly small 90cc Honda, rolling the throttle excessively to get the bike in motion. Then he tottered off into the night, the overloaded Honda’s unbaffled exhaust pipe snarling like an undersized lap dog. I was so amazed and unprepared for his incongruent departure that I felt sorry for the man and hoped he wasn’t such a pretentious loser in the rest of his life.
 
As my vacation approaches, I can’t resist sharing my enthusiasm about my time away from work and what my plans are with my co-workers. If I am going camping in my tent and taking along my bicycle or canoe, their general response is "ugh".  They did those things when it was necessary, as impoverished teenagers, but never again.
 
However, if I am going dinghy cruising, I receive an entirely different response. That sounds so wonderful, I wish I was going with you, I am so envious! My co-workers are convinced I own a yacht, even when I tell them what Naomi’s length is. Sixteen feet or sixty feet, they can’t visualize what that means. Every sailboat they notice along the coast or in Halifax Harbour is substantial and I am a little reluctant to insist mine isn’t.
 
They assume I will be living a Jimmy Buffett lifestyle in the Maritimes during my dinghy (yacht) cruise. I’ll have all the conveniences of home. But while my friends can only see their neighbours’ backyards from their patios, I’ll have the ocean, palm trees, and the aroma of hibiscus surrounding me as I tend my barbecue and sip Margaritas while I relax in my sailboat’s cockpit and palatial cabin. 
 
As I crouch under the low canvas boom-tent of Naomi, swatting mossies, I can smell and  just about touch the cow-pie littered pasture just beyond the stern. I chew on unheated stew straight from the can. Should I pick yet another bug out of my mug of cheap red wine or just suck it back?  If my fellow workers saw me now, their preconceptions of my sailboat cruising would be shaken also. They would be just as surprised and dismayed with me as I was of the big Geordie biker in the past.

I wanted a low stress vacation. September is the height of the hurricane season, so any exposed cruise in the Maritimes can easily be disrupted by tropical storms or post tropical storms with strong winds and rough sea conditions. Although many tropical storms track up the Bay of Fundy, the Saint John River offers lots of shelter for a dinghy.  Heavy rainfall would be a short-term bother but wouldn’t affect cruising on the river. 
 
I’d motor when I wanted to and sail when the winds were convenient. I always have a pair of 9’ oars along since rowing is one of my favourite pastimes and Wayfarers handle well under oars. Occasionally, I’ll use an oar for poling in narrow waters. As well, I carry a collapsible paddle that functions as a bow or stern thruster. Sometimes, I line my Wayfarer along a shallow stream just as I’d line a canoe.
 
A couple of books, provisions, and a carton of red wine were stowed away.  Along with the canvas boom-tent, I brought my MEC nylon land tent so I could camp onshore. My cruising ground was the Lower Saint John River from Fredericton to Hampton, NB. I had no itinerary except to explore some places I hadn’t been before. If I ran out of time, I could leave Naomi at one of the yacht clubs or marinas in Saint John. Twice before I’ve left her there and caught the bus back to Fredericton to retrieve my vehicle and trailer.

September 11 Thursday:

Early in the afternoon, I arrived at my daughter Elizabeth’s apartment in Fredericton where she attends the University of New Brunswick.  I left my car and trailer at her home after launching Naomi across the river on the north bank. Together, we walked back across the old railway bridge which is now part of an extensive network of walking and bicycling trails throughout the city.  After a brief farewell, I was on my way.
 

The old railway bridge we had just crossed looked awfully low. As I neared the bridge I became convinced the mast would strike the bridge, tear out the bow fitting and bring the mast down. Since I had sailed under it before, I knew that everything must be okay. First I closed my eyes, and then I performed a more seamanlike action. I concentrated on tiller-handling but didn’t look up at all. Only the changing shadows on the floor indicated my safe passage beneath the bridge. Down river, near the Princess Margaret Bridge, I raised the mainsail and had a satisfying sail down river towards Oromocto. 
 

For the first night I anchored just north of Oromocto Island. I chose a spot out of the buoyed channel which also had a beach. After lowering the main anchor I rowed astern, then cleated the anchor rode, and rowed vigorously to set the anchor in the river bottom. Then I released the rode and rowed astern towards my chosen location. I was tired from the drive and launching process, and looked forward to finally relaxing under the boom-tent. 

Naomi came to an unexpected stop. I had set the Danforth too far from shore and had run out of anchor rode within a dozen feet of the shallows.  Unfortunately, the water was waist deep.  I rowed back out again to go through the whole process of raising and re-setting the anchor.

From my anchorage, I could see the low and high water wharves on the other side of the river at Upper Maugerville (immediately above). As a child I lived beside the wharves in a rambling old building called Bluebird Corners. We lived in an apartment above a combination general store and large common room where the locals gathered in the evening to chat. I recall a player piano with its scrolls of perforated paper and a record player with a stack of 78s, both of which provided the sound systems of the 1950s. In our spare time, we children were always on the wharves or afloat along the river bank in long narrow punts poled or rowed by older boys.

September 12 Friday:

I woke up to a misty morning with ducks noisily searching for breakfast in the marsh grass alongside. The temperature had dropped to a cool 3-4°C during the night. Not long after, I moored Naomi to the floating dock beside the cement low water wharf at Oromocto. 
 

This is the garrison town for Camp Gagetown, which is one of the major military training grounds in Canada. Since I was on the base, I toured the military museum. I found it a bit depressing to see displayed the “antique” vehicles I was once familiar with as a reservist in an armoured corps regiment. The GMC deuce and a half, the Dodge 4 x 4 radio truck and the Sherman tank were obsolete when we operated them; but seeing them sitting on their concrete slabs with a metal plaque before each one gave me the feeling these were truly vehicular grave stones from a distant past.

click here for full-sized chart image

From Oromocto, I sailed for Ox Island. Because the wind was gusty but irregular, I decided to use the genny for an experiment. Allan Parry and I had used this arrangement before, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with success. It is a quick way to have an efficient sail available but at the same time be able to douse it at will and without the extra hassle required with deploying the boom, mainsail and mainsheet. This Wayfarer trysail is a method promoted by Ken Jensen, a Norwegian Wayfarer sailor, for strong winds but it is also a good sail for lesser winds.  The Croatian Wayfarer cruiser, Mato, has other suggestions and thoughts about a loose-footed main for cruising.

Allan had suggested a block at each stern quarter should make the jib set more efficiently. So I tied a spare small block to each end of the traveller (above) and tried out the sail in these non-threatening conditions.  A real loose-footed sail would be cut differently so the clew was much lower than the clew on the genny.


As Allan and I had done before, during this cruise I often unfurled the working jib at the same time as using the genny on the mast. I am sure the “sailing purists” will wince at such unorthodox sail combinations, but as an aging and indolent cruiser, I like these arrangements.

Ox Island has a large sand accumulation on its north end. This feature is common for several islands on the Saint John River. I found a cozy nook to anchor in and set up the boom-tent. The water level changed considerably while I was there, but I’m not sure how much of this difference was tide related or caused by the opening and closing of gates on the huge dam above Fredericton at Mactaquac.
 

All along the Saint John River, I saw many bald eagles, ospreys, herons, Canada geese, kingfishers and various ducks. Ox Island had a sampling of them all. I walked the wide expanse of sand beach and even came upon a volleyball net set-up (above). I’m sure if I had checked the internet before I left home, I would have found several web-sites and blogs devoted to solo beach volleyball but for now I was at a loss as how to play the game.