September 19 Friday:

 
click here for full-sized chart image (left half)
click here for full-sized chart image (right half)

The boom tent was covered with a rime of frost in the morning. It was difficult to stow under the foredeck in this stiff condition. I sailed from my cove but once in Grand Bay the wind was a header and the tidal current strong. Long Reach was going to be a chore to motor up.


However, I was relieved to find the wind becoming light after I entered Long Reach (above). Soon, the wind disappeared while the day became hot and sunny.


At Browns Flat I moored to the steamer wharf.  The adjacent village of Beulah Camp has been an active Wesleyan church community since 1894. For decades, the river steamers brought members to the wharf for a religious summer vacation before the dominance of the automobile. After I purchased stores at an Irving station by the highway, a church member drove me back to the wharf. From here, I traveled upstream to Oak Point (below) for another pleasant night.

September 20 Saturday:

click here for full-sized chart image (right half)
click here for full-sized chart image (left half)

It’s a windy day. I sailed Naomi from my quiet anchorage behind Oak Point into a steady south wind blowing up Long Reach. Ahead, the river entered a steep-sided narrows by Evansdale and one of the cumbersome cable ferries makes regular crossings here as well.


I decided to remove the main and use the genny as a trysail instead. If conditions got out of hand ahead, I’d furl the genny and use the motor. I found an attractive little sandy inlet under Gorhams Bluff to go ashore and change sails. I shall file this inlet away as a potential campsite.
 

The passage by Evansdale to Hampstead was uneventful but the wind hardened. Just beyond Hampstead, I made a diversion off  the river (see chart above). Now I motored, rowed and poled Naomi through the marshes of Little River (above) until I arrived at a railway bridge. Then I pottered in a similar fashion to the head of nearby Palmer Creek (below).


What an attractive location to be Wayfarer cruising. There were an abundance of ducks and geese. For a time I watched a bald eagle continually hassle a heron. Every time the heron alighted on the stream bank, the eagle would buzz him until the heron moved further upriver and landed. As soon as the poor heron landed, the same eagle would attack it until the bird moved yet another time.
 

After leaving the marshes of Palmer Creek, I had a speedy but a bit bumpy passage up the Saint John River under working jib alone until I arrived at a narrow stream on Lower Musquash Island. This passage gives access to an extensive marsh which fills the complete centre of the island. The entrance is 10’ deep and is locally known as the Hole-in-the-Wall. With some shelter from the winds outside, I decided to anchor here for the night.
 
Anchoring was a fiasco. Not only did the southerly wind continue to blow through the trees, but there was a 1-2 knot current flowing upstream and I was tired. After three go's, I finally got the main anchor set in the bottom, but I couldn’t get enough scope to set the stern anchor properly and in the correct direction. It kept dragging. Once again, I retrieved substantial branch. I then filled my boots with an e-coli saturated concoction of mud-manure and bog water from the chewed up pasture when I made an unsuccessful attempt to get ashore with an anchor rode. 
 
Finally the stern anchor was holding temporarily off-shore but Naomi was lying at an awkward angle broad to both wind and current. Coming to my senses I thought: f--- this. I’ll wait for the wind to decrease and the current slacken before I do anything more. I’ll have a cup or two of wine and dig into my junk food while I wait.

Later on, everything came together. I went ashore and, with a long line, implanted the stern anchor in a distant mud outcropping.  Naomi was lined up now so that she was nose and tail to the current and wasn’t going to overhaul the anchors as the current changed or drift into the tree line and entangle the shrouds with overhanging branches.