It’s always rewarding to receive a call or email from someone with one of our boats, telling us how much they love and enjoy them. Especially heart-warming are the messages from folks who have acquired an older dory in need of some TLC but who can look beyond the repairs required to the boat that can still be. Often they have questions about how to approach the needed repairs, and we do our best to help them. And of course if they are within driving distance, we are happy to do the repairs for them.

After more than two weeks and – dare we admit it, Jay? – quite a bit of fun,  students from the Picton Castle Bosun School celebrated the launch of their newly-built skiff last Friday. Built of select tropical hardwoods, notably Silver Bali planking, this is no lightweight boat – neither in construction, nor heft (it took a full 10 hands to walk her down the beach!). She’s built powerfully strong with lots of naturally-grown frames and big stern knees too. And thanks to the unique boat lumber, plus fastenings of copper and stainless steel, she’s going to last a long time!

For more than a week now, Jay has had a group of students from the Picton Castle Bosun School working with him in The Dory Shop. The Bosun School is a land-based program aimed at young mariners who wish to advance their skills away from the necessary distractions of a ship that’s underway at sea. This is the third running of the program and we’re delighted to have young sailors from Canada, the USA, Finland, Iceland and Denmark in attendance.

It’s taken ol’ Dory Plug an entire week to post a few more pictures from the finale of our fall dory building course – that is, of course, the launch of the gang’s Handline dory. Very sorry about the delay; part of which relates to my distinct lack of talent for technology. I held off posting more pictures, hoping I would have some smartly edited video to post with them. Seems like that might take a bit longer. So for now, please enjoy some more snapshots of our launch party.

They say there’s no rest for the wicked and though I’m not sure what Jay has done to deserve it, I can tell you he’s been a busy guy lately. Following the completion of our fall dory building class last week, and a gloriously warm and bright long weekend during which we Canucks celebrated our Thanksgiving, Jay returned to the shop to welcome an all-new group of newbee boat builders.

Today is the big day folks! This afternoon at 2 p.m., participants in our fall dory building class will launch one freshly-baked Handline dory. Tradition requires a semi-secret initiation ceremony and a little row in the harbour to be sure she floats ~ if you’re in the greater Lunenburg area, feel free to drop by and cheer them on!

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! 

We’ve just become aware of some great short videos of some of the live performances that took place in The Dory Shop as part of the Nova Scotia Schooner Association’s September Classic two weekends ago. Check out this one of the über talented singer-songwriter-musician, and sailor, Lennie Gallant singing his haunting Peter’s Dream at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTQxvjGCUYo  Or how’s about some blues with Steve Hickmore at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4is1JNdxNXg&feature=related. Check them out!

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.