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.

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.

For those folks fortunate enough to have grown up on the water, thoughts of summers spent ‘messing about in boats’ bring back some pretty wonderful memories. And it’s just those warm thoughts that have our gang here at The Dory Shop so stoked as we begin building a big Fortune Bay sailing dory for the Tim Horton Children’s Foundation Summer Camp at Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia.

Lunenburg’s hopping today as people arrive for the Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival. This is an amazing festival that just happens to be celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The line-up (including a band called the Dory Bungholes!!) is spectacular. Meanwhile, down at The Dory Shop, we’ve been welcoming a steady stream of folks, many drawn by the sight of Jay rigging our latest Handline sailing dory.

A reminder to everyone that if you are in the Halifax area this weekend (July 23-25), you should visit The Dory Shop and a dozen other Nova Scotia boatbuilding enterprises as we display our best at the Nova Scotia In-Water Boat Show at Bishop’s Landing on the Halifax Waterfront.

Since the Seine sailing dory has not yet been shipped to her new owner, and since last Friday was such a gloreous day here in Lunenburg, Jay and Bub decided to take her out for a sail.

Many thanks to the crew of the sail training ship Picton Castle who sent us these pictures of their newly refurbished sailing dory, Sea Never Dry, sailing off Mayreau in the Caribbean. Built by The Dory Shop, this Fishmaker dory has been around the world at least twice, maybe three times, we’ve lost count. Recently the crew got all creative giving her a very customized paint job and sewing a fresh set of sails from cloth purchased during the ship’s call at Dakar, Senegal this past January.