SV Kiviuq

From Campobello we sailed southabout Deer Island, an area renowned for its cetacean populations (and thus also populated with whale-watching boats), into Passamaquody Bay and up to St Andrews. Here we picked up a mooring just 150m or so off Market Wharf, the large and well-appointed town wharf.

St Andrews is an unusual small town, being exceptionally neat and orderly and popular with tourists. The town owes its origin to the American War of Independence which forced many inhabitants of Castine in Penobscot Bay, Maine, who were fiercely loyal to the British Crown, to flee downeast to what was to become Canada, after the slight disagreement with the French there was settled. And the folk of Castine didn't just move themselves. Many of them also moved their homes by towing them behind their schooners and anything alse that would sail. Having sailed those waters ourselves, we can only marvel at their skill and fortitude. Thus St Andrews is a loyalist town boasting some of the very oldest buildings in Canada. It is also laid-out on a rigid grid structure, which was the British way of the time, with well-defined blocks and streets all intersecting at perfect right angles. I must admit though, that is not something I remember about the places in which I grew up in Britain.

Not so perfect is the St Andrews harbour mooring field. When we arrived in the late afternoon, the closest mooring to the one we chose was unoccupied. Late in the evening it was picked-up by the largest whale-watching boat we saw in the region - a large, steel catamaran with big inboard diesels capable of taking it down to the Deer Island archipelago in short order. The second night we were on our mooring was windless and perfectly still, and it was for this reason that we experienced the dreaded 'bumps in the night'. In the early hours I was awakened by a soft thump and a small lurch in the boat's motion. This is the sort of thing that propels sailors up the companionway and into the cockpit as if they are doing a moon-launch. Once I touched down I saw the the whale-watcher looming over us an arm length away and moving very gently in the opposite direction to Kiviuq. At this point the distance separating the hulls was increasing, but then, horror, the boats reversed the slowdancing moves and began coming together again! As mentioned, it was a very still night and Marilou was able to manually fend-off Kiviuq's ghostly and enormous dance partner before they could enjoy a second kiss.

Thankfully, after the too-close encounter, the boats settled down again as they both finally reconciled themselves to the turning tide. And of course it was the facts that the tide was turning and the night was windless that was the cause of the excitement. The underwater profiles of the big catmaran and Kiviuq, with her deep fin keel, were very different and so the boats accommodated to the changing direction of water flow in different ways and at different rates, until, that is, the tidal flow was again stong enough to brook no argument from either vessel. It was only then that Kiviuq's crew returned to Earth, and their bed.