These are the reversing falls at Saint John.
Rather than taking them at low tide, as shown on the gallery below, we took them when river and sea height match; it was smooth sailing then.
We saw our first whales in Massachussets Bay, some 20 miles offshore Boston, in July. A pair, consisting of a very large one (as large as Peregrinus?) and a smaller one, they were going in our same general northward direction; they came from behind on starboard, crossed right by our stern on port, and passed us; so awed we were, there was no thought of grabbing a camera.
Our second sighting happened in the middle of the Bay of Fundy, en route from Annapolis Royal to Musquash Harbour. This whale was much smaller, measuring perhaps 20 feet. We first heard its breathing, and then we saw it come up a couple more times, as it chose to ride in formation next to us, before it submerged and went away.
August 21, 2014.
In line with their worldwide fame, the Members have been most friendly and welcoming. You may notice that the Club is located on the Kennebecasis River (an affluent of the Saint John), yet its name bears an extra “s”. Legend says the Royal Charter came back from London as Kennebecassis, and so the Club’s name stayed.
An image of the Queen of Canada adorns the entrance. August 22, 2014.
At St. Luke's in Annapolis Royal the Royal Consort Choir treated us to a sort of Billboard's Top Ten of the music of a century ago.
The #1 hit of the year, Alexander's Ragtime Band, was verboten in the Imperial German Army, for the Kaiser had decreed that the two-step, as well as the tango, were too vulgar, and therefore unsuitable for officers in uniform.
The people of the Annapolis Valley had just voted to make their county dry, and so Wine is a Mocker was a popular song. But women couldn't yet vote in Nova Scotia, so men could be heard singing Don't Let The Women Vote, which is surprisingly catchy: may it even be why Québec did not let the ladies vote in full until 1940? The Nova Scotian ladies, however, had the Women's Battle Song, and gained their right in 1918.
The car was becoming popular among the masses, so The Little Ford Rambled Right Along was very apropos of the time.
When the Great War began in August, the merry tune It's A Long Way To Tipperary echoed what everyone expected: that it would be a magnificent quick affair. But by year's end, when about one million men had died and the the trenches had been dug, the tone had changed. Hence the poignant Keep the Home Fires Burning:
Keep the Home-fires burning
While your hearts are yearning.
Though your lads are far away
They dream of Home;
There's a silver lining
Through the dark cloud shining
Turn the dark cloud inside out,
Till the boys come home.
The Admiral at the Songs of 1914 concert. St Luke's was established under Royal Charter by George III, and exhibits a handwritten note by George V (who signs George RI, or Rex Imperator). The Empire is gone, but the Anglican Church of Canada remains.
Lieutenant General Timothé Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, established the colony at Port-Royal in 1605, where it remained for the next one-and-half century as capital of Acadia under French rule and as later capital of Nova Scotia under the British, until the founding of Halifax in 1749. Once the English took over for good, they renamed the town Annapolis Royal, after the Queen.
When this capital was French, the Brits attacked many times; and when it became English, the French attacked no less than six times; in all, thirteen battles were fought in Port-Royal/Annapolis Royal. In 1629, in particular, it was the Scots under the 1st Earl of Stirling, of Menstrie Castle, who took it from the French for three years.
And the Scottish called the land New Scotland, and by that name we know it today.
View of the the Rivière du Dauphin, now Annapolis River, and known as "the cradle of Acadian Culture", pictured from Fort Anne at Annapolis Royal. The fort was originally built by the Scots, and then rebuilt by the French; its final shape as designed by the great Vauban. The Great Union Flag (1606-1801) is flown over it, in memory of the time the British took over the land.
Peregrinus lies moored just beyond the trees on this picture.
––– George Martin, A Clash of Kings
An atypically windless morning in Summer in Maine, leaving Birch Harbor. 3 August 2014.
From what we saw, this might be the closest to penury you can get in Mount Desert Island.
1 August 2014: We stayed at another B&B just a few of blocks away when we visited Southwest Harbor in 2011. If it had been named as curiously as this one, we might still remember the name!
The Portuguese who first fished its waters in the 16th century called it the "Rio Fundo", or deep estuary. Eventually it became anglicised to "Bay of Fundy," home to the highest tides in the world, and the bay that separates New Brunswick and Maine from Nova Scotia.
Yesterday Bennet and Hank from Pratique, a beautiful Outbound '46, kindly invited us for an afternoon sail. We came across a couple of basking sharks, ocean sunfish, rainbows, and other animals. Ocean sunfish grow to exceed one ton. The basking sharks were about half as long as the boat.
Click the image for more pics.
In all of this island there is but one liquor store, several kilometres from where Peregrinus lies moored. Furthermore, as the Canadians taxed us on the alcohol we brought from abroad, we feel unmotivated to further contribute to the treasury, and so, there shall be no acquisition of spirits while in Canada.
We had the bottom of a Bombay Sapphire, unconsumed for lack of tonic, but the most excellent crew of Ruffian, out of Newcastle, donated their very last bottle of tonic, sailed all the way from France, to the cause. We added ice, a few drops of Angostura and of Bittermens and drank it to the health of Fiona and Iain.
Capital flight: Angostura was invented and made for 51 years in Santo Tomé de Guayana de Angostura del Orinoco. As the climate for doing business in Venezuela has had its ups and downs for the last couple of centuries, the firm that makes it ended up leaving the country in 1875 as yet another dictator had taken over the country. The product has been made in Port of Spain for the last 139 years.
When the English partitioned their Nova Scotia territory into three separate colonies in 1784, they named the westernmost, non-peninsunlar section, New Brunswick, in honor of King George III's possessions in Germany, as, in addition to being the mad king of England, he was Prince Elector to the Holy Roman Empire, on account of concurrently being the Duke (Herzog) of Braunschweig-Lüneburg. In English, as well as in Spanish, French, and other mainstream tongues, Braunschweig is rendered as "Brunswick".
It is amusing to consider that the King could in the 18th century get away with being a Prince Elector, whereas Thomas Arundell, the father of the Anne Arundel of Annapolis, Maryland, was jailed and could easily have lost his head for merely accepting a Countship from the Roman Empire just a bit over a century before the kings of Britain became Germans themselves. That's the divine right of kings for you.
We arrived in North Head Wharf, Grand Manan Island, on 4 August 2014. Peregrinus is on this photo, center, behind the wharf. A phone call to the Canadian Border Services Agency that same afternoon and voila!, we were checked into Canada. Were that all countries worked like so.
