The gunwales are in and the guys are making the seats, known as thwarts, for their handsomely crafted Black Rocks dory. This afternoon we’ll get out of the shop a little and visit Michele Stevens Sailloft in First  Peninsula.

We told you the fellows in this spring dory building class were quick learners. Turns out they are also quick builders! Check out these photos of their dory, taken Friday afternoon.

We’d like to extend, a little belatedly, a big welcome to participants in our spring 2011 dory building class, which got underway Monday. We’re always wondering how we manage to get such great groups of people – truly! And this gang also includes some pretty fast learners. At this point, they actually have the dory fully planked (more photos to come obviously!) and will be fitting her knees this afternoon. Jay is highly impressed.

Who says all the fun ends with Old Christmas? Not here at The Dory Shop, where we’re busy planning a special celebration to mark a major milestone in the building of the twin schooners.

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

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.

After weeks of ‘company’ in the shop, what with our fall dory building course, followed by a second course for students of the Picton Castle Bosun School, Jay is once again back to building boats solo. He tells me that suits him just fine for the moment. He’s got the first plank on a new Black Rocks dory, his radio is tuned to the CBC (as always!) and there are enough people dropping by to break up his days.

Once every year, about this time in October, The Dory Shop welcomes a pair of very special visitors. They arrive in their stunningly clean pick-up truck (always wonder how they do that!) and unload the equivalent of dory building gold. They are Edgar and Otho Hatt and they supply our “naturally-grown” dory frames or knees.

We had such a great time hosting our dory building course this spring, and have had such overwhelming interest in the prospect of future classes, that we’ve decided to host another course this fall. And this one will be even better thanks to the valuable input of our spring class.

This is a Lunenburg dory, which means it’s 12 feet on the bottom, 15.5 feet overall. Jay finds it a nice change after building two big Fortune Bay dories back-to-back.