Whale Watching in the Bay of Fundy

Leaving Eastport heading northeast

Fish weirs off Northwest Harbour and
Helena Island as we approached Lords Cove

Thursday 13 September was a big day for us.  We had checked into the USA at Eastport the previous day and spent the night on a buoy there but we couldn’t take the most direct route west from Eastport because BV’s air draft is too great for her to get under the 43’ high Roosevelt Memorial bridge that connects Maine to Campobello Island.  Well, to be absolutely correct, if we had timed our departure exactly perfectly at low water we should have just squeaked BV under the bridge but it wasn’t really worth the risk.  Instead we timed our departure so that we weren’t fighting the tides and planned to leave the way we had come in, via East Quoddy Head, and hoped that we might see whales along the way too.

Lords Cove, Deer Island

But to time the tides to be in our favour, we needed to leave Eastport no later than 0900 to carry the very last of the ebb out of Friar Roads and Head Harbour Passage but if we turned to head southwest outside Campobello Island at that point we’d be bucking the tide roaring up the Bay of Fundy for the next 4 hours – not a good state of affairs! So we decided to anchor in Lords Cove, Deer Island [Ed: yes, in Canada, but we weren’t going to go ashore] for the intervening period and so make East Quoddy Light just as the tide turned south and west in our favour.  Lords Cove is a beautiful spot and, had we had more time, we could quite happily have spent several days here.  We didn’t have that time but we enjoyed our extended coffee break in the bay, oohing and ahhing at the early ‘fall’ colours and enjoying watching the tide rise and cover all the interesting hard, lumpy, bits.

Mirages creating ‘upside down islands’

We had been told that the best time to see whales off East Quoddy Light is around high tide so at 1250, about an hour before high water, we raised the anchor and headed out to the eastern end of Campobello Island.  It was a beautiful day with little wind and mirages caused the distant islands to gain upside-down doubles.  As we motored towards the lighthouse we could see a couple of boats stationary in the water….

‘Thar she blows’!

… and then we saw the first indications of whales – the blow.  To be honest, at the time we thought we were looking at finback whales but the photos clearly show these as humpbacks.  It didn’t matter what species they were though: they were whales; big, breathing, diving, don’t drive your boat into them, real live whales.  Wow!

There were a couple of commercial whale watching boats and 2 small, privately owned motor boats as well as us enjoying the spectacle of the whales (2 we think, perhaps 3) gently trundling south on the tide, having a spot of lunch.  Nothing terribly exciting, just up and down, on the surface for a bit and then dived for a bit and, it seemed, not at all bothered by having spectators at their dining table.

Every now and then one of the whales would show its flukes when it dived.

It didn’t happen very often but I was lucky and managed to get a couple of reasonable pictures of the event.

After about 30 minutes we felt we should move on and give the animals some space so we trundled southwest along the coast and within 5 minutes had sight of another whale which was being watched by only one other vessel.  We joined them and were treated to a real close-up encounter with another feeding humpback.

Two dive sequences.  Top set – whale in surface recovery mode.  Lower set – whale diving for extended period

This humpback showed its flukes far more frequently than the first ones we had seen.  It would surface from a more extended dive, ‘porpoise’ on the surface for a while and then take a final deep breath and dive, showing its flukes, for another extended underwater period.

It was fabulous to watch but, of course, we had no idea when the animal would next surface or, indeed, where.

And then it surfaced almost right in front of us!!  Nicky squeaked, thinking that she was about to run into it but we weren’t moving fast (maybe a couple of knots) and the whale obviously knew better than to surface directly in front of us – it was a little to one side.  So it ran down our port side, whilst I rapidly snapped away and Nicky pointed out that we could clearly see one of its pectoral fins shining white just under the surface.  Perhaps just a little too close then….

And after a couple more breaths….

…it dived away again; and we thought that we’d probably had the best of its time and headed off too.  What a fabulous end to our time in Canada!

The Bay of Fundy off Campobello, NS, Canada

Friars Bay Campobello NB Canada

Making good progress across the Bay of Fundy.  Southern Wolf Island is ahead and left

So, the alarm call on Monday 10 September was hideously early!  So early that I don’t have any pictures of our departure from Westport, but then it was pretty dark.  But we achieved the aim and had a gentle 1½ -2kts of tide helping us out of the northern entrance of the channel between Brier and Long Islands, rather than being squirted out madly in a rush of, as the charts warn, up to 6kt of tide.  With full sail set and a very pleasant 10-12kt easterly breeze, we had a great sail north towards and past Grand Manan Island and onwards to the southern tip of the Wolf Islands.  It was very cool again for most of the passage and the person on the helm needed to be well wrapped up with an oilskin jacket, fleecy hat, gloves and a scarf.  But by late morning it was quite warm enough for the person not on the helm to sit in the shelter of the sprayhood in trousers and a t-shirt; the sun’s warm but the moving air isn’t.

Southern Wolf Island

About halfway across we were lucky enough to see 2 puffins flying in formation, stiff wings flapping furiously as they headed out towards Nova Scotia and, presumably, the North Atlantic beyond.  Our books say that puffins leave Maine and New Bruswick in August and spend the winter on the ocean so these must have been 2 of the last ones to leave for the overwintering grounds.  Neither of us had ever seen puffins before that moment [Ed: amazing really since they breed on the cliff around Herm], so we have our fingers crossed that they have good fishing and survive the winter well so that we have the chance of seeing them in their breeding plumage next year.

Off Southern Wolf Island we furled the genoa, slowed down and had a good peer around.  Cate and Murray Basingthwaite (Coolchange) had told us that whales can often be seen in the area, sleeping on the surface.  We saw a couple of whale-watching boats and headed towards them but, as we did so, they headed off back to the mainland, presumably at the end of their tours.

A rather blurred, and very distant, photo of, we think, a fin whale.  The whale was too far away and not on the surface for long enough for me to get any more pictures

And then suddenly we saw a blow! We headed over towards where we had seen it but, by then, the whale had disappeared.  We did this a couple more time and eventually got close enough to see the whale surface and dive a few time, and I also managed to get just the one picture.  We never saw the whale’s flukes (which is, apparently, typical of fin whales and Minkes) but, equally, we didn’t see the blowhole at the same time as the dorsal fin (typical of Minkes), so we assume it was a fin whale.  It led us a merry dance for about half an hour and then just slipped away.  So we carried on, under mainsail alone towards East Quoddy Light at the eastern end of the Canadian island of Campobello.

South of East Quoddy Light and the entrance to Head Harbour

Making our way into Head Harbour

We thought that we might spend the night at Head Harbour, so off East Quoddy Light we lowered the mainsail and motored into the inlet on which the harbour’s situated.  It’s quite a long way up the inlet to the harbour but when we got there we found it to be full of fishing boats and lobster scows and, whilst apparently it is the done thing to raft onto a boat or a scow it didn’t look terribly inviting and they looked busy getting ready to go.  So we decided to head round to Friar’s Bay on the northwestern side of the island.

East Quoddy Light from the northeast

By this time, because we had spent time whale watching, sailed slowly from there to Head Harbour and also explored the harbour somewhat, the tide had turned and we found ourselves bucking 2-3 knots of outflowing tide as we motored along the northern side of Campobello. East Quoddy Light took quite some time to disappear in the rearview mirror!  But at one point we did pick up a very useful back-eddy, which had us whizzing along at 9-10kts over the ground.  Unfortunately, all too soon we lost that and were back to fighting our way along.  We considered stopping off somewhere at anchor until the tide turned or slackened but by the time we reached a suitable bay we were tucked far enough into the shore that the tide against us wasn’t so bad, so we just continued onwards.

Friars Bay on Campobello Island - Canada

To our port side is Eastport - USA

We eventually reached Friar’s Bay and dropped anchor in the southern corner, between the big jetty for the International Park and the enormous fish farm.  With the wind forecast to be around 20kts from the southwest the next day, this was definitely the most sheltered place to be.  So, on one side we had Campobello (Canada), on which is a little piece of both Canada and the USA (see below) and across the channel on the other side was Eastport in the USA.  And, a little further east, but also across the channel, we could see Deer Island (Canada).  The boundary between the 2 countries zigs and zags around the channel but is most clearly marked at this time of year by the lobster pots – none on the Canadian side; loads and loads on the American side!

The jetty/dock to get ashore to the International Park and President Roosevelt’s summer cottage

Campobello is famous as the island on which President Franklin D Roosevelt had his summer cottage.  His wife, Eleanor, survived FDR by about 20 years and after her death a large portion of the island as well as their summer cottage, was gifted to the Canadian and American Governments to become an International Park, celebrating the many years of friendship between the 2 nations.

Rain – and suntan lotion(?)

Reflections on a rainy day!

We had planned to go ashore on Tuesday 11 September to explore but when we woke up it was raining hard……..and it continued to rain all day.  We could have been big and brave and gone ashore anyway but it would have been pretty miserable.  So we decided to make the best of it and try to catch up the blog somewhat and leave FDR, Eleanor and North American friendships for the next day instead.

Friars Bay, Campobello, NB, Canada