Motor Mount

I bought my dory used and I was incredibly lucky that the previous owner had an outboard and had rigged up a bracket to make it work. As you may know the transom of a dory is raked forward pretty well and most motor mounts won't sit right on it. This rig uses a sailboat rudder hardware and some plywood and a couple of oarlocks to make an ingenious mount that is easily removed or put in place. The one defect if you can call it, it that you can't have the rudder in place for sailing and the motor hanging off the stern. Oh well, it probably would not have worked well anyway to have the motor off center.

Here's the rig that the previous owner of my dory thought up.

As you can see it has a pintel that fits into the bottom guntle on the transom from a rudder rig. And two push lock pins that fit into a set of oar locks mounted on the transom. The bracket itself is just a piece of plywood cut out to hold the motor with a triangle brace in place to keep it vertical.

The metal brackets are two inches tall and one inch going forward. That's just the right spot for the pins to mach up with the oarlock holes.

Mine is now shifted to the right a bit so that it clears a bracket for my river anchor. You of course can mount yours wherever it seems right for your boat and motor.

The height of my bracket is 10 1/2" tall. But you can make it anything that fits your motor. The width at the point just below the top piece is 8 1/2 inches. The width at the bottom is 5 1/4th inches. I don't think that these are critical measurements. It's more a matter of what fits your boat and motor.

I moved the oarlock on the right to the left to accommodate a stern river anchor bracket. (You can see the notch in the transom where the bracket sits. The original bracket was 18" wide.

As you can see the bracket extends out about 4 inches. It doesn't have to be exact, as most outboard motors have some range of adjustment for vertical. BTW the triangle block measures 6 1/2" x 5 5/8" x 2 1/2 inches. But again it's not key. Except that the hardware needs to fit and it's 3" long and therefore needs the 2 1/2" of wood to attach it to. (Oh yeah, it's a right angle triangle with the long side along the bracket.)

My transom with my custom piece of wood. The guddion holders are originally mounted to fit my rudder and the bracket made to fit that. If you have just a motor mount you can put them anywhere.

Ok, how to build one. First figure out where to put those oar locks, drill the holes and mount them. Then cutout and make the main board, and the triangle, and find some angle iron for the brackets. Drill the holes in them but don't mount to the board. Attach the pin part to the triangle board. Attach the triangle piece to the back board, Put the pins through the metal brackets into the oar locks, hold the board in place and mark the holes, and then attach them. Then with the board in place put the bottom transom guntel piece in place, mark the holes and attach it to the transom. Of course if your guntels are already on the boat you'll have to put the triangle piece on the board last.