Dildo Days

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Dildo, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland:  This weekend past marked Dildo Days here in Dildo, Newfoundland.

A dildo is a wooden object about six to eight inches long, cylindrical in shape, about one and half inches in diamenter, inserted into a round hole til it jams.

You wap your hand around …

The oar  attached to it, and presto, you have a second class lever, like this:

wooden oarlock

Surely you didn’t think it was anything else?

Alternatively, the town is named after a Captain Dildo.

A boat parade is an essential part of community fun. Saturday morning, as the overnight rain and fog clears, the little fleet sets sail out into the bay for a one hour cruise:

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Our boat is the Trinity Erickson, shown in the topmost picture of today’s story. Our captain is Eric Pretty, shown below.

 

 

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After an hour pleasant sailing in the strengthening sun, back to Dildo:

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In previous years, the Coast Guard sent a cutter to particpate in Dildo Days, but none showed up this year. Instead, we had a fly past of a Fisheries inspection plane swooping low over the town. It was an attractive twin engine plane. The fishery is very much diminished here. Many of the small crew fishing boats have been converted to pleasure craft, and motor runabouts greatly outnumber the few boats with large numbers painted on the side (licensed for the commercial fishery) .

In defiance of traditional folklore, the weather has been hot — up to 30 degree celcius — the skies clear, the winds calm. Except for those times it has been blowing rain through the fog.

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