Rafting the tide

This is what we did on July 26th....

Today we experienced the high Bay of Fundy tides by taking a raft trip on the Shubenecadie River. As we wrote before, the Bay of Fundy is noted worldwide for its high tides and in addition its tidal bores.
The tide water enters the bay at its widest point, and as it passes along toward the head of the bay, it is in effect squeezed by the ever narrowing sides of the bay and by the constant shallowing of the bottom. At the very head of the bay, the advancing tide becomes a wave varying from just a ripple to 10 feet in height and this wave continues up the Shubenacadie River. This wave is known as a tidal bore. So, we have the phenomenon of the river changing its flow, with the bore wave flowing in OVER the outgoing river water.

OK-now you know what the tidal bore is --what we did is ride in Zodiac rafts chasing, surfing and jumping the tidal surge. What a wild ride! We got soaked to the skin. This is a photoof us with Mel and George, our travel buddies taken before the trip up the river.



This is a photo of our boat as it passed by an observation deck. Don't we look a little wet?
Fortunately, we had a sunny day and the water is about 75 degrees. We found the water temperature surprising but apparently it has to do with all the depth changes..

Another exciting part of the trip is when our boat lost its steering! One of the other rafts towed us part of the way back, until the owner arrived with another raft and we moved across to it while drifting down the river.

The whole phenomenon is amazing. We actually boated out to a sandbar that was about a mile across. We stood out there and the incoming tide rises so rapidly that one minute you are standing on sand and less than 2 minutes later the water is ankle deep! We returned to our boat as the bore washed over the sandbar. We continued up the river to play in the waves, currents and whirlpools. On our way back, the same sandbar was covered by 18 feet of water.

All in all, it was a fun day but very exhausting. Here are few photos from the raft company's web site that show the kind of ride we experienced.

Those waves came crashing over us and even filled the boat!








We rode wave after wave.







Doesn't this look like fun??