Dories are one of the few hundred-year-old ship designs to have survived into the 21st century, and for good reason. Their sea-keeping abilities, slippery shapes, extreme versatility, and ease of construction make them one of the best choices for a beginning or veteran boat builder looking for a great boat that can be built on a budget.
Dories began appearing over 200 years ago as small, lightweight, versatile workboats ideal for fishing. They were easy to build, easy to launch from the beach, easy to row or sail, and could carry a large load of gear and fish. No one knows exactly where the design came from, but many builders began building these ships on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, dories were popular in Portugal, and in the US, Nova Scotia was the center of dory construction. The boats were used extensively to fish the Grand Banks, one of the most important cod fishing locations in the world at the time.
Many people think that flat-bottomed boats, like most dories, are somehow less seaworthy than boats of some other bottom shape. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you load a dory, with its flared sides, the boat becomes more and more stable. As an example of how seaworthy dories are, in 1876 a man named Alfred Johnson dared in a bar in Gloucester, Massachusetts to sail single-handedly across the Atlantic in an open dory. He chose a 20-foot dory that he named Centennial to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the United States that year. She was outfitted with sails and a daggerboard, and on June 15 she left Gloucester for England. He arrived in Liverpool on August 21, 1876 after crossing one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the world, the North Atlantic. Survived a huge gale and some horrible seas in a flat bottomed open boat with no floatation or auto rescue covers!
Modern dories come in a number of variants. There are them optimized for rowing, sailing, power, high power, wild whitewater and more. Almost every possible usage or browsing preference can be accommodated in some kind of dory. Dories are used for tossing through waves, deep sea fishing, gliding down whitewater rivers, skiing on water lakes, as work boats carrying heavy loads of traps or divers, sailing in a light breeze, just about any use you can imagine. . They also do so with much less effort than many other types of boats. Imagine going 25 mph using only 25 horsepower in a 20 foot boat – a dory can do it. Imagine a 20 foot rowboat in which one person can row up to 6 knots hull speed with ease over long distances – a boat can do it. Imagine loading 8 tons of cargo into a 27-foot boat and propelling it out on the open sea – a dory can do it.
Modern dories are surprisingly easy to build. All frame elements are straight. You can literally go to any lumber yard, buy pre-milled lumber, screw and glue it, cover it with plywood, and viola – you’ve got a dory. No exotic materials, specialized tools, or special techniques are required. If you can build an easel, you can build a boat. Most modest sized dories can be built in a few dozen hours for a few hundred dollars. All you need to do is make sure the designer of the dory you select has designed their boat to be made from standard sized lumber. Some of the old fashioned designs require unusual sizes, you have to spend many hours sizing the wood before you can start building.
With modern epoxy and new polyurethane “Gorilla Glue” type glues, you can build strong and secure dories, even if you are not an expert wood craftsman. These glues fill gaps well, so there is no need to carefully fit and expertly fasten each joint to the hull structure. With fiberglass and epoxy, you can also use non-marine grades of plywood. Flexible and exceptionally strong epoxy and fiberglass coating on the exterior seals the hull and adds strength and abrasion resistance. Unlike previous polyester resin based fiberglass, with epoxy, no specialized application techniques are needed for boat building. Simply place the cloth on the plywood and then moisten it with resin applied with a brush or roller. It is simple.