C-Dory Predecesor

M

mutski

New member
Here is our first dory, which I built from plans in the National Fisherman around 1986. The lofted plans are still under the flooring in our upstairs bedroom, lol. It was 22'with mahogany frames, a marine plywood skin and a layer of epoxy/fiberglass on the bottom for durability, powered by a 75HP two-stroke Suzuki. The kicker was an 8HP Suzuki knocked off the back of a skiff that belonged to a halibut fisherman headed to sea. He told me if I could get it off the bottom of the harbor, it was mine. I flushed it with fresh water, dried out the plugs and it ran fine forever after. It was a wonderful boat, but I ran out of energy for sanding and painting. We sold it about five years ago to a fellow at the University of Alaska with a hobby of restoring old dories. The pics are from a pothole bay in Prince William Sound where we were weathered in for a week - 40mph wind and driving rain. We never got anything to dry out the whole time we were there. You can see why I thought a C-Dory would be the perfect replacement.

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Sometimes I wish we still had it. But sanding still makes my hands hurt.

Wood Zep - How do you like the 16-footer? Why 16' vs. 22'?
 
It is really cool and I love it. And it's also a 2 season boat: the warm and dry season....lol... I think it would be super neat to build a boat from scratch like that and I suspect you had a lot of fun building and using it. Did you use one of the Tolman plans?
 
My dory came from plans John Gardner published in the National Fisherman. I stretched his plan by two feet, and lofted it on the plywood floor of the house we were building at the time. However, Renn Tolman was alive and building boats at the time, and he gave me a ton of good advice. I went to his shop whenever I got stuck. He was a true lover of the craft and shared his knowledge with anyone who had an interest. He also loved sailing Kachemak Bay in his double-ended cruiser, the Pennywhistle. His legacy lives on through the books and plans he published. There are Tolman boats all over Homer and Kachemak Bay; I see them all the time. As you probably know, he developed a method to glue the seams of plywood skiffs and largely eliminated ribs. That made his skiffs much cleaner and lighter than mine, which had plywood nailed over traditional framing. He was a heck of a guy!
 
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