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Doris the Dory
Chuck!
I've just drained a glass of beer to celebrate the launching of Doris the
Dory, with the help of my friend Jim and his son Michael - 'doris' is
French for dory, btw.
She rows pretty quickly, as you might expect, and overall I'm delighted.
Nothing's perfect, though, and I wish I'd made the oars just a shade
longer - and remembered to bind the oars in way of the rowlocks. We'll fix
both of those some time.
I'm delighted, I must say. She's comfortably stable, fast and carries
loads well. I think we'll have some fun with her. Everyone who has rowed
her - Jim, Michael, me and Jim's neighbour - stepped out of her, smiled
and said 'It's really fast!'. Doris makes a big change for someone whose
usual sail is a beamy plastic racing dinghy with firm bilges and planing
sections.
I'll be fascinated to see how she works with the ballast and rig I've been
planning. I'll start with a standard D4 spritsail made from the
cheapest polytarp - I expect some experimentation will be required.
By my calculations, with displacement of 400lbs or so the righting moment
of this dory at 15 degrees is the same as the righting moment of the
Flying Mouse at 250lbs. Now the FM is just fine with a D4 sail, so I'm
expecting something like it to be ok with Doris - so long as I put a
little weight in the area under the thwart. I doubt I'll get particularly
good upwind performance and I think trying to do so will be a bit hairy,
but I do think the performance on other points of sailing will be fine.
Gavin Atkin |
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