On Saturday between teaching courses on the McKenzie River we drove to Pacific City on the coast for Dory Days. They have a wonderful tradition of beach lauching and landing in specialized dories. Beach launching in high-prowed, flat-bottomed boats is the only way to get out to the good fishing by Haystack Rock.

The middle weekend of July is when they celebrate. The parade began at eleven, led by some of the remaining traditional oar-power surf dories.

Next came a the main fleet–dozens of larger motorized dories, with broad tails for planing.

And a very large fish.

After the parade we joined our friend Ben Vaughn at the beach for one of the wilder experiences in years–taking Ben’s dory Coquille in and out through the surf. The set-up is one person in the bow, pulling hard through the waves, and the lead rower standing in the stern pushing, steeering, and directing the bow oarsman. Going out you need to hit the breakers straight and hard. Coming in is trickier. You need to move shoreward between waves, but when a breaker comes, you need to reverse power and try to prevent getting surfed–because if you get to surfing there’s a good chance you’ll catch an edge, get knocked sideways, and perhaps rolled. Or god forbid bury the stern and endo. No no no not good. Here we are getting slammed on our return to shore–Ben pushing, Glade pulling, and Brad acting as a load of halibut.

It’s rare to see any of the traditional rowing dories out there, but the Perkin brothers, Rob and Andy were out in Sea Breeze.

Dylan Roberts brought Miss Nestucca down, but was still on shore running safety. Josh Putman came by and joined Rob Perkin for a launch. They went looking for trouble in some of the bigger surf, and found it–their dethroning was pretty hilarious. Look these guys up online if you want to have some huge fun in Pacific City.

Even if you don’t get out in a dory, the beach circus is fun to watch–motor dories coming in at mach schnell, airhorns blaring, skittering up the beach, tourists running for their lives, trucks stuck to the frame in sand–good clean fun. Cricket says it’s like Lava Falls meets Nascar.

Afterward it’s best to walk over to Pelican Brewing for a Doryman’s Dark Ale.

And perhaps a rest

Our sweet respite at Raines Resort on the Nestucca River, not far from the beach.

So great to hang out with fellow dory nerds–our brothers from another planet.