The classic Briggs Grand Caanyon Dory was based on Jerry Briggs’s earlier open fishing boat, the Rogue River Special–still considered by many Rogue boaters to be the best design ever built. A few years back Andy Hutchinson had an original in his shop for an upgrade and we recorded its lines. In the fall of 2023 we taught a course at Lowell’s Boat Shop in Amesbury, Massachussetts, birthplace of the original Grand Banks Dory. We made one change: the originals had the last eighteen inches of the stern gunwale truncated and the sidepanel cut down at an angle for ease of motoring. But we just couldn’t do it–in our miinds it violated the lines of the boat and weakened the srtucture considerably. So we ran the gunwales clear to the end in a lovely Briggs curve.
