Posts to this blog regularly bear witness to the incredible boatbuilding talents of our team here at The Dory Shop, particularly the work of our master dory builder Jay Langford. But Jay’s talents extend well beyond the boatbuilding world as proven by the painting – his latest! – shown here.

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.

We’re delighted to report that the first-ever Lunenburg Wooden Boat Reunion held over the weekend was a great success. Two very full days of activity including the Heritage Cup schooner race, sloop, small boat, even putt-putt-powered boat races, displays and demos by boat builders, oarmakers and sailors, shop tours, musical entertainment and much oogling of beautiful wooden boats, wrapped up last evening. Phew!

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.

A technical issue on the Underway section of  The Dory Shop website prevented us from posting photos in a timely way as we built this lovely big Fortune Bay sailing dory for the Tim Horton’s Camp at Tatamagouche this spring.

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.

It’s a little over a month until the start of The Dory Shop’s fall dory building course and spaces are still available. I could give you the ‘hard sell,’ telling you all about how great the course is, and of course Lunenburg is spectacular in the fall. However, I’d prefer to pass along some comments from past participants instead

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.