by Weston Farmer
LOA 15' 1", BEAM 5' 3", DISPLACEMENT 275 POUNDS.
No small vessel can top the Gloucester dory as a bot able to take punishment and ask for more. But a true dory is the world's crankiest boat. Badger has all the dory's virtues of sea kindliness and husky charm, yet she'll be easy to power and manouever.
Badger is a modified dory suitable for the lower-powered motors. As seaworthy as the wave tops themselves, she is comfortable as an old shoe. She has enough lumber in her to last under hard service for a long time. A better all-around camp boat couldn’t be built. She weighs dry about 275 pounds, so is not a boat you can carry on the car top. She’ll require a goodly space in which to be built and this space must be dry, because rain will swell and readjust her slats until you’ll scream at patching up her bevels. All boats are like this. They must be put together dry. If your garage or basement isn’t big enough to accommodate her, build a lean-to to shelter the work. Since there are only ten boards in her hull, she builds easily and no hot bending is needed. The dory type is well known in Eastern coastal waters. Usually these boats are slab sided, narrow sterned and are built so as to “nest”; that is, the thwarts are stowed in the bottom, and one dory goes into another. By this means deck loads of these boats are carried to the Grand Banks, where they are used far offshore by the fishermen handling codfish. Such boats are seagoers, but the pure dory design is cranky and requires able handling by men who know how. By modifying the type, widening the bottom and giving the stern end some bearing, the dory is made into a docile craft for small outboards. Badger, shown in the photograph, has proved fast with small power because her waterline is narrow with a light load. As she goes down in the water, these waterlines widen and she becomes quite stiff. The more you load her, the more stable she gets. I have used the boat shown in the photo for a long time; I have had her out in anything Lake Superior could throw. I have hauled rocks for the crib of my dock until her wales had only an inch of freeboard. She is shown after one such trip on a calm day resting placidly at the end of my dock. Just enough rocks have been left aboard to tip her and show her shape. The photo was shot from the window of my design office, right over the drawing board on which her drawings were made.
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