Congratulations to ‘graduates’ of our fall dory building class on the successful launch of their hand-crafted 17′ Handline dory. The boat not only looks great, she performed really well in successive trial rows. And let me tell you, every member of this group turned out to be a very capable rower! 

It’s blowing half a gale here today and so Jay is back inside (see picture from Friday below), working to add a handsome finish to these two Nutshell Prams he’s been working on. Just look at that gunwale!

Dory Plug has been away on vacation (and even Jay took a week off to sail aboard the stunning schooner Mistral!), so that explains why there haven’t been any posts here lately. However we did have the lovely Miss B taking some photos for us as Jay continued to build not one, but two lovely Nutshell Prams with the assistance Arran.

We have lots of tourists in Lunenburg these days and so lots of folks dropping in to see what Jay is working on in the shop. Right now it’s a little Nutshell rowing pram, seen here.

The Black Rocks sailing dory is just about ready (just waiting on a piece of stainless rod for the rudder) and Jay’s taking advantage of a gorgeous summer’s day to do a bit of painting in the boatyard before starting two new prams.

It’s not too often that The Dory Shop gang take a road trip together but that’s just what we did yesterday, driving inland from Lunenburg, across the middle of Nova Scotia and then North to the Northumberland Strait and specifically, the Tim Horton Children’s Camp at Tatamagouche. We made the trip to assist with the launch of the camp’s new Fortune Bay sailing dory, affectionately known as Timbit (Tim Horton’s being Canada’s number one purveyor of coffee and donuts; and Timbits being the delicious donut holes), and also orient camp staff to their new boat.

With the spring dory building class successfully concluded, Jay’s well into our next boat – a sweet little Black Rocks sailing dory to display at WoodenBoat Magazine’s show at Mystic, CT next month. As you can see, he’s just working on the garboard planks.

Champagne and Solomon Gundy accompanied the launch of our spring dory class’ boat this morning. As usual, we had a bit of an initiation before taking the boat down to the beach during which the guys had to take the four gastronomic sacraments of Lunenburg – Solomon Gundy (that’s pickled herring to the uninitiated), sauerkraut, Lunenburg pudding, or pig’s pudding as I grew up calling it, and all washed down with a shot of dark rum.

Participants in The Dory Shop’s spring dory building course took a little field trip yesterday, down to Second Peninsula to visit another historic (but considerably less dusty) workplace – the Michele Stevens Sailloft. Located on the second storey of an unassuming little building at the very end of the road, this sailloft is filled with history – you can almost feel it as you walk across the workworn but always clean wooden floor – and so much skill. Michele is a fourth generation sailmaker whose business occupies the very loft established by her great grandfather Randolph when he moved across the bay from Tancook Island. Literally thousands of sails have been built here – from the largest working mainsail in the world today, for Nova Scotia’s own Bluenose II, to sails for our little dories.

We kicked off the long Victoria Day weekend this afternoon with ‘graduation’ ceremonies for participants in our spring dory building course. Once again, we were blessed with a great group, all eager to learn about traditional wooden boats, to get right in there with the plane or the hammer or the paint brush, and to enjoy the offerings of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia and our waterfront in particular.