intro to whitewater dories and the Hyndeman double-ender
october, 2020
Drift boats have a long history of use on rivers in the America, with various fishing drift boats being adapted for white water by boaters beginning in the 1930's.
The double-ender differs from other drift boats and river dories in that it doesn't have a transom (flat stern) and is instead pointed on both ends. I was drawn to this design because of the symmetry of this shape and how it accentuates the beautiful lines on the dory.
Below: a photo of the plans for Woodie Hindman's 16' double-ender from Roger Fletcher's incredible book "Drift Boats and River Dories." This book provided starting point for building the Odonata.
photo from OARS
the lines for the Hyndman double-ender out of Fletcher's book
lofting
In order to ensure that the plans I started with would create a boat that was fair, I went through a process called 'lofting.' Lofting is a method of laying out the critical lines of a boat on a sheet of paper in full scale. With this single sheet of paper once can pull all of the measurements necessary for building the hull of a drift boat.
Through this process we learned that a few of the frames needed adjusting from their measurements given in Fletcher's book but overall they were accurate. Pretty impressive considering that many of the measurements were taken off old, existing boats.
