Building a Dory in a Tight Space

From a Glen-L Newsletter

I live in Kotzebue, Alaska, which is located 30 miles north of the Arctic circle.  I  have turned the upstairs of my house into a woodworking shop and some years will build a build boat up there, which is what I decided to do again this past winter.

After looking at all of the different boat designs available on the web, and in thinking about a design that would allow me to do some eco-tourism work up here, I decided to build a Glen-L Hunky Dory 23'.

As my upstairs room is only 19' long, and the jig calls for it to be '20 long, I built two 10' jigs, first building the bow to the middle of the boat on one jig, and then from the middle to the stern on the second jig.

In early June, I dropped the two jigs out of the upstairs, leveled both, spliced them together, and then reset the ribs, transom and bow on the now 20' jig, and then went to work building the boat.

Given the size of the boat, and the conditions necessary to do epoxy/glass work in the short Arctic summer, I thought that it might take two summers to finish this project, but we had a warm, dry summer, and I just kept working away at it—I probably put 5-8 hours in on it every day over the course of June, July and into the middle of August. 

I launched the boat on August 21st, and I just love it. It's a great boat, as fun to drive as it was to build. There is still a lot of work yet to be done on the boat to put it into the "finished" bucket, but that work can wait until next summer, for now it's a good, serviceable boat and I'm just so pleased with how well it turned out. Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful design with us!

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