I awake to a beautiful morning, again, and head ashore to the Shelburne Yacht Club. They have a payphone on the wall and a toll free number for Canadian Customs - who give me a reference number that I must display prominently on Shadowmere - Easy-peasy.
There are no marinas in Nova Scotia - just yacht clubs that have pontoons and mooring buoys - and free anchorages. Lovely club, friendly, free coffee!! and very helpful. I walk the town
A nice quiet town - ten by ten streets and avenues with a main street. Well spaced out houses, lots of trees.
love the trucks
And the "motel" rooms are cute mini cabins
Main street
Loyalists - home from home, I wish I had been here during the 12th week in July
Flegs on the road, more Belfast than Belfast...
I find a Museum called the Dory shop and fall in love with the Grand Banks Dory boats
I get chatting to a guy who teaches people to build these with beginners in a week. I feel a new project coming on when I get home. The Dories here use pine boards with bevels to allow a scarf joint, the bottom of all dories is flat - which makes construction much easier - if you remove the seats you can stack dories - big ships used to take a load out to the grand banks, lower them over the side -one or two men to a dory and let them loose to line fish in the fog. If you couldn't get back to the boat,you died (maybe).
And some details of their construction - suitably rustic that I might be able to master - if I have an electric plane and get my bandsaw working properly!
The frames are joined with metal joiners - less hassle than steaming or having to pick through timber to get bent ones. Oak is used here but I am told many woods will do as the "planks" have considerable strength
The bottom is pine planks with grooves, mastic and biscuits (thin lathes that fit in the grooves - I got a router and learnt to use it before the voyage - I made a new staircase and galley locker so the bottom is easy... Knots in the pine are removed and replaced with epoxy so the Dory shop is not averse to modern technology.
The fact that the slopey bits of the frames are straight also makes things easier. The complete design is easy to build - if you can use a plane - a new skill to learn!
This is how they were stacked on the mother ships.
Milford runs one week long courses, I am also told to visit Lunenberg further up the coast as they also make boats, sell plans, books and videos. An alternative method of manufacture is to use sheets of plywood bent around the places and a bottom plywood base - with similar frames to the ones above. The secret to this method is to add fibreglass tape, epoxy and filler to the joins and probably sheath the entire boat, inside and out, with fibreglass cloth and epoxy resin - and do a superb paint job.
I leave Shelburne and head for Halifax where Nick from Donaghadee is due to join the boat - no wind!
Halifax is big - maybe smaller than Belfast. It is up a channel and then is narrow where the town is, and then opens up to a large deep basin that can hold a 100 large ships at anchor - it was used during WWII to assemble convoys that set out across the Atlantic. I anchor off Shearwater yacht club before the town and do some maintenance - but their washing machines are out of order and there is no supermarket. Also I am planning a land trip to Montreal to see Rachel who has immigrated there. I move past the two to Dartmouth Yacht Club where they have mooring bouys where I can leave Shadowmere safe. I get a train to Montreal - a mere 18 hours away and fly back - the flight takes nearly two hours. Canada is big.
I found Dartmouth Yacht Club really helpful. I ask Dan the manager about buses to the train station and he runs me the 4 or 5 miles himself. Returning by plane meant I arrived at the club at midnight - and again Dan came to the rescue to get me through the security gates - I was able to dial up a number on the keypad, talk to him at home and he was able to open the gate remotely, Phew.