After waking up to the soothing sound of incoming aircraft at the Fredericton International Airport, we dragged the boat to the downriver side of Oromocto Island and shoved off with the intention of paddling the mile across/down the river and landing in town for coffee and breakfast sandwiches. (Don’t judge; we’re on vacation at this point, and hot Tim Hortons is way more appealing than pack-flattened Clif Bars.)
Despite the early hour, the wind had already picked up significantly, and by the time we were halfway across the river we were seeing small whitecaps scuttling across the water’s surface and battling a tailwind with lovely broadside gusts. As this is less than ideal in a boat with only six or eight inches of freeboard, we added “check the weather and wind reports” to our breakfast itinerary.
We beached at a public boat launch behind a ballfield and took turns hiking the two blocks up to sustenance and bathrooms. The morning entertainment consisted of a softball tournament and watching local boaters struggle in and out of the launch; the wind was stiff enough that two separate parties nearly lost their craft in the process of unloading from their trailers.
The forecast wasn’t great, and called for high winds for the duration of the day. We eyeballed the whitecaps for a while, and after watching a group of kayakers spend 20 minutes struggling to clear the last hundred yards to shore we took another look at the wind speed forecast to see what our options might be. As luck would have it, the projection was that things would die down… at dusk. This meant that if we planned to make our allotted mileage for the day, we had to decide whether to fight strong winds and potentially-boat-swamping waves during daylight hours, or to paddle on flat water in the dark.
We mulled it over just long enough for another power boat to drift off its trailer. As its owner sprinted into the river after it, we made the call to wait until nightfall.
We hopped back in the boat and paddled up an inlet next to a lovely public park, where we set ourselves up under a picnic awning to gorge ourselves on burritos and play cards for the day. We took turns dozing off in the sun and watching visitors climb on some form of playground equipment that was clearly designed as either a torture device or some sort of crucible of natural selection; the thing was a spinning seat with no handles stuck on top of a tilted pole, which meant you could work up some good speed BUT you didn’t maintain an even speed during rotation. Several little kids (and more than one adult) were forcibly ejected. Good stuff.
The only downside to our relaxing day in the park was the screaming drone of aircraft buzzing us every fifteen minutes. Later in the afternoon a small plane started doing figure eights over the town… and continued for THREE HOURS. It almost made us miss the maddening background noise of rapids, and by the time we were ready to shove off Steve was talking me down from throwing rocks.