C-Dory 25', any owners willing to share their experiences with theirs?

Olde School

Well-Known Member
Considering a change of boats, this one has our attention.
Please PM me if you have one, or had one, and are willing to chat about how it worked for you.
Thank you!
 
If you dont mind keeping the conversation in the forum, I'd appreciate it! I'm curious as well.. specifically fuel consumption numbers, and how it runs in the chop, being fairly flat bottom boats.
 
Considering a change of boats, this one has our attention.
Please PM me if you have one, or had one, and are willing to chat about how it worked for you.
Thank you!
Trust me when I say this. I cant compete with you on price on a 25 foot boat! Im looking more for a 19-22. Good luck with the negotiations if you go that way.
 
Friend has a 22 I think. Runs terrible in a chop unless you know how to use trim tabs (key accessory). Not sure who rigged his tabs but they put the Bennett pump on the floor of the cockpit / bilge so it flooded with saltwater within the first year and we had to rerig. The trim tabs themselves are mounted too low and drag all the time. Not sure how much that kills top speed but it's just bad boat rigging to mount tabs too low. So watch out for badly mounted trim tabs / pumps by either factory or dealer (my guess at the culprit)

Drift is stable great with the flat bottom but also gets blown quickly. A drift sock is an excellent accessory to reduce wind powered drift speed.

Fuel efficiency does seem to be good but I can't give hard numbers.

Overall I'd say a good but not great fishing boat, but it also does a lot of other boating things (sleeping, cruising, trailering) fairly well.
 
Look into defiance san juan 220,

I bought one last year and love it, I also was looking at the c dory but got turned away after talking to some people who owned them

Cheers
Sudsy
 
I've been in one and the flat bottom is a ***** in the rougher water. My Seasport is not as forgiving as a Grady Hull but it is very good in big water and has the same creature comforts as the dory.
 
A friend of mine bought a 21ft a few years ago and there is now a fleet of about 6 of them running out of Kitimat. The latest one was the 25 and they seem to be very happy with it. They are much lighter than your Sea Sport/ Orca boat so they pound a little more but are much better on fuel. Things can get pretty gnarly on the Douglas Channel, especially in the afternoon when everyone is running into port but these Dorys seem to handle it with ease.
 
We've had our 2 nights aboard a 25' C-Dory from 2008. It had a pair of Yamaha F115s.
The reason for considering a bigger boat was to make things more pleasant for the girls ie toilet, shower, and dinette.
The lightweight aspect of the C-Dory appealed to me because I am happy with my current gas engine truck.

The C-Dory was slappy in any kind of chop, but newer ones might be better as the website says they have more deadrise?
There was lots of painted plywood in the construction, hmm...
The toilet was a real challenge to use due to being in a small compartment, and none of us are big.
The FW tank was quite small so if one did use the shower, one would have to keep it short.
The convertible dinette wasn't really wide enough for 2 teenagers to sleep on.
I wasn't impressed that the depth sounder didn't work on a charter boat! That made anchoring a challenge.

It was a nice enough boat, I would own one, but the extra length didn't make enough of a difference for us to trade up.
If you don't regularly run areas like Nahmint in the afternoons, you could be quite happy with one.

FWIW our present boat is a 2006 Campion 622 West Coast edition (factory pod with a Yamaha V6 200).
We just ran to the Festival of Lights and back and sure like the Campion over the C-Dory, primarily due to the better handling of chop in the Strait.
For now this boat works extremely well for us 95+% of the time. For the other times, I will rig a shower bag and pack the portapotti.
 
Sorry guys, I am doing something wrong here - was trying to reply to Tykeeing's post. I can't agree with him more if 95% you are happy with it, I think you are doing well. I can really relate to this thread as compromise was the name of the game when we were boat shopping, I am the wife and we were looking at 22 - 25 foot size 3 years ago. Our criteria at the time was it had to be able to get up the incline of our driveway and be parked there - so that ruled out anything larger than 25 feet. A must for him was a big fish deck, and for me I wanted to be able to seat 6 occasionally in the cabin when we had wet weather without anyone having to sit down in a vberth (kids with spouses come with us and grandchildren are on the way), flushable toilet, hardtop, also for the 2 of us to be able to overnight on it. Everything we looked at in that size range was going to work but was never going to be 100% perfect. We ended up settling on a pursuit 2460 denali. It gave him the back deck space and me my seating in the cabin when seating is folded down to a bench seat. So, we just stayed 5 days on it this month at Nootka for the first time - we have only stayed on it 1 night at a time previously. It worked fine, we have a small microwave in the vberth and with a rolled up table I purchased from Cabelas (easy to store in a small space when not using) I was able to prepare all of our meals and we used a camp stove that we made a frame for that sat securely on top of our large marine cooler. One of the things that turned out to work like a hot damn that we didn't think of when we bought this boat is it has a large live well under one of the seats that we now use as a cooler - with block ice on the bottom, covered with a wet towel and then frozen meat on that with another wet towel on top, then veg/fruit/condiments and we then put a piece of foam over that and then all breads, muffins etc. - everything was kept well refrigerated and the meat was still partly frozen 5 days later, with only half the ice melted also the live well drain conveniently drains out any water from the melting ice. So, we just had to take one cooler for cooking supplies and another one for fish. We also have a vinyl back for the boat so that goes on in the evenings and we can sit and just chill out comfortably in lawn chairs on the back deck at night protected from wind and rain. Is it 100% perfect - nope - one of those $300k boats I have no doubt would work better but I am not interested in ever spending that amount of money for a boat - so this works well for us, we are warm, dry, slept comfortably and I was able to cook great meals.....it is all a compromise. Now we are going to spend 5 days this month anchoring out in the Gulf Islands - I too have bought 2 portable shower bags, we have fresh water wash down on the boat so in theory this should work ok to be able to get a shower in daily.
 
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