Boat shop building destroyed by Dorian
The building was an old one but still, the folks at Wedgeport Boat Ltd. were still surprised to see it shifted off of its foundation from strong winds that blew through the region from Dorian on Saturday, Sept. 7.
By the end of the day Saturday, the mould shop used to construct boat hulls at Wedgeport Boat Ltd. was a collapsed, crumpled mess.
No one was injured as the building was unoccupied at the time. That is the most important thing, said an owner of the company.
While the building was used to build hulls, the all-important moulds of hulls used for such construction were outside across the road.
“It’s a good thing there were no moulds in the shop, there was just a hull. We had just taken all of the moulds out Thursday,” said Skip Muise, an owner of the boat company.
Muise was in Halifax on Saturday and first saw the damage through photographs.
Dorian was a tropical storm as it passed by southwestern Nova Scotia on Saturday, but was still categorized as a hurricane as it was heading towards the central part of the province. It still had high sustained winds in southwestern Nova Scotia and some gusts late in the day Saturday in Yarmouth County were still be recorded at well over 100 km/h with gusts of 110 and 129 km/h recorded at the Yarmouth airport.
Downed trees and downed power lines accounted for much of the damage from the storm in this tip of the province.
At Wedgeport Boat Ltd. on Sunday morning as he was still surveying the storm destruction, Muise said the winds had pushed the building right off its foundation.
“This is an old building, I want to say it’s 80 years old, maybe. It belonged to Pat LeBlanc a long time ago. From the looks of it the wind just shoved it right over,” said Muise. “It looks like it shifted the whole thing 10 feet.”
Obviously any damage a company suffers never comes at an opportune time and this case is no different. Muise said the boat shop is “swamped and busy” with orders.
“It’s not a good thing to have happened,” he said.
But, he said, the damage won’t have any impact on workers. He said they were at the stage with projects where hulls being moved into other buildings on the property for further work.
“I’ve got a boat in that shop, a boat in that shop, a boat there. I won’t lay anybody off because of it. We’ll just have to schedule around it,” he says.