662 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 27, 1907. 
Dories for Beginners. 
Every beginner is anxious to strike out and 
skate before bis ankles are strong enough to 
hold him, just as every swimmer tries to strike 
out vigorously and swim before he has confi¬ 
dence enough in the ability of the water to 
sustain him, and just so every novice at sailing 
wants to hold the helm on a full rigged sloop 
and be able to sail her alone before he knows 
the A, B, C’s of the sport. But each art re¬ 
quires its disciples to undergo a certain amount 
of initiation. A novice is ashamed to be seen 
learning in a homely, under-rigged but safe, 
wide, flat scow, yet how much quicker he would 
learn if he would do so. He wants a natty- 
looking craft for his first love. _ 
We have been asked time and again whether 
we would recommend a sailing dory as a safe 
boat for a beginner to learn the mysteries that 
enshroud the first boat. Now, this question, 
unless qualified in particulars, is very deceptive 
for this reason. The dory, the simon-pure 
original dory, was and is the most cantankerous, 
cranky craft ever put afloat. In marine circles 
she is the trick donkey that throws every novice 
that puts foot on her. Narrow below, but 
wider on top, a dory invites confidence from the 
inexperienced only to flop them overboard to 
become the laughing stock of the onlookers. 
But, as we all know, it takes an intelligent ani¬ 
mal to be the trick donkey, and just so with 
these same fiat-sided dories. If one under¬ 
stands them, knows all their tricks, etc., he 
could go around the world in a dory. Cranky 
as they are. they are the best sea boats on the 
Atlantic coast. Many a hardy Gloucester man 
owes his life to a dory that has ridden out 
gales that swamped larger craft. One must sit 
very low and stay low in them to be safe. Their 
high, sharp ends successfully cuts through the 
high gray heads that roll over the banks. 
One day years ago it was blowing a half a 
gale and the surf was pounding in on the 
Asbury Park (N. J.) beach so that the fisher¬ 
men did not go out in their surf boats, as usual, 
and fish. Summer boarders had to hold on to 
their straw hats and the women all forsook the 
beach. About 10 o’clock a menhaden, or 
"1110? sbunkerman,” as they call the steamers 
that net these fish for their oil, came in off the 
beach and repeatedly blew her whistle. ‘Larry 
Newman, who used to sail parties on the old 
sloop Defiance in fair weather, was ashore. To 
the amazement of onlookers, he launched a 
small dory and in some miraculous manner 
made his way out through the heavy surf. It 
was a feat that kept about twenty men spell¬ 
bound in breathless expectancy of seeing man 
and boat hurled back on a comber’s crest. He 
got out to the steamer somehow and started 
back. As he neared the shore anxiety for his 
safety increased, as it was apparent his dory 
was nearly sunk beneath him. Once in the 
breakers, it was easy enough for him to come 
ashore, but not a man in the crowd expected 
to see him come, as he did, right side up. Now 
on a foaming crest, then out of sight for 
minutes it seemed. Finally, after watching his 
chance, he was seen to bend his back at the 
oars as a seventh son of a seventh son of a 
sea, as they call it, was rolling in. It rose up, 
up, up, curled over at the top, and with a roar, 
one end of the wave up the beach smote the sand 
a terrific blow; the curling edge ran down the 
beach, roaring as it came—as waves do when 
they break-—and it was amid the spume and 
splatter of this sea the dory appeared and fairly 
shot up the sloping sand on the film of water 
sho*t inland by that sea. 
It was a narrow escape, for the dory was 
down to within an inch, it seemed, of her gun¬ 
wales. Larry jumped out and held her as the 
undertow sucked back, and wading in ankle- 
deep, others helped him to hold her until the 
next wave sent the dory, hauled by several men, 
well up above high-water mark. 
What was it that sunk Larry’s dory so deep? 
True, there were about three inches of water in 
her, but there were also about a thousand of the 
fattest, plumpest mackerel you ever saw. 1 hat 
little dory brought them safe to land, and 
Larry sold them at a profit which all agreed lie 
deserved for such an exhibition of seamanship. 
For rowing purposes in a sea the original 
dory cannot be beaten, but for sailing the re¬ 
quirements are entirely different and such a 
boat is not at all fit for it, nor did the people 
who used dories attempt to make sailboats of 
them. Yachtsmen, who knew the seaworthy 
qualities of this boat, and not knowing what 
made them so, wanted a cheap boat and yet 
expecting to retain all the good qualities of a 
dory and also get all the good qualities of a 
sailboat, began to put sail on dories, and by so 
doing they evolved the most miserable con¬ 
traption ever gotten up. They were cranky- 
due to very small width. If a man tried to 
get around the mast, the boat was just as liable 
to flop over on top of him as not. If he tried 
to sail her, she would flop over and nearly 
capsize, and was so light when they tried to tack 
they would turn up about head to the wind and 
then they would back down wind all of a flutter, 
completely out of all control from the helm and 
had to be rowed around with an oar. It was 
found necessary to carry sandbags to make 
them stable enough to carry sail or else have a 
crew to hike out to windward and hold them up. 
The Huguenot Y. C. had such a class, and 
they were much wider than a rowing dory, yet 
they have backed clear across the creek and 
gone stern first ashore on Glen Island, unable 
to get them going right. Mr. C. D. Mower 
planned a dory, known as the Swampscott dory, 
and that is the part I have been leading up to 
to emphasize. They were called dories because 
they resembled the dories in outline, but were 
nothing at all like an original dory, but more 
like round-bottomed sailboats. The beam was 
about doubled, and this width gave them some 
stability. But to get it it required six or eight 
planks on each side, instead of two or three 
as the original dory had. So when a man says 
he owns a dory or asks if a dory is safe, one 
has to see her before he can honestly say yes 
or no. 
A sailboat, with dory outlines, can be built, 
just as the new Class X now formed in Gravesend 
Bay, from designs by Mr. Mabry, that is a good, 
safe boat for beginners to learn sailing in, but 
they are dories in name only. A beginner wants 
a boat wide enough and flat enough for him to 
stand on the edge without tipping it over and 
with a small sail, so that he can see how the 
wind affects it before it turns the boat upside 
down. 
Be sure to have a small sail when learning, 
no matter what kind of a boat it is. 1 hen the 
pressure of the wind will only be like a baby 
pulling on the mast to tip the boat, whereas 
with a large sail you will think a couple of 
men are pulling her over, and it will take con¬ 
siderable skill and hiking out to prevent her 
tipping over. You can easily test a boat’s stiff¬ 
ness, or stability, as it is called, by pressing on 
one edge of her. If she tips down easily you 
will know she is too cranky for you to learn in. 
Get one that you can safely sit on one edge 
without turning her over; then you have some 
chance to learn some points on sailing before 
she dumps you out as the cranky one will. ' _ 
The main advantage of the dory is that it 
is so cheap as to be within the means of many 
beginners who could not afford any of the other 
kinds of boat, as no one makes a specialty of 
building stock boats of other models as they 
do dories. 
SHOWING HOW A NARROW BOAT WILL TIP OVER EASILY AND WIDE ONE WILL NOT. 
