I took this shot of a McKenzie River Dory yesterday evening. Alice and I got chatting to the owners who were coming back from a 3-day trip on the Colorado River on her. They had taken her through Class III rapids. Just imagine that! Taking what is effectively a 12 foot, flat-bottomed rowboat through some tough rapids. Yikes!
The owners had built her themselves, taking 60 hours over 6 months to build.
Dories like this were what Captain Powell used when he first explored the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. There are now commercial outfitters who will, for a price, take passengers on a river trip in a dory.
River Dories had not really been invented when Powell took his historic river trip. Powell’s boats had keels. They were not flat bottomed or hard chined. Hence, they could not correctly be called Dories as the term is most commonly used today.