In February of 2003 my wife Jeri Ledbetter and I toured the west coast of Spain and Portugal hoping to find, among other things, the beautiful fishing boats the Iberian Peninsula is famous for. In particular, I was interested in how they compare with the driftboats and dories of North America. We found a lot. Here are some of Jeri's pictures along with some notes on what we encountered. Portugal We started in Lisbon where we rented a Smart for 25 Euros a day. We headed south to the Sado River, upon whose estuary our guidebook said there were boats like this: Which look just like (to me) the North American driftboats and dories. Well, we never did find that one but we found a lot of others. At the tiny village of Carrasquiera we found these guys building (and supervising, of course) a couple new boats. And a mess of old boats. I was amazed to find that the vast majority of the small fishing boats I looked at were, by almost any measure, dories. They are built with internal ribs, butted plank sides and floor, full end-to-end rocker, flared sides, and, like Buzz Holmstrom's Julius, they all had a touch of side-to-side rocker as well. One interesting thing was that all the side ribs were L-shaped, with about an eight-inch foot that was bolted to the floor rib. None that I saw had in inner or outer chine. The really cool thing was the amount of curve they put into the bowposts, and how far up into the air some of the bowposts reached. Absolutely beautiful boats. We found extreme examples further north in this retired saviero, a four-oared boat used for dragging fish nets ashore: We found drydocked boats And moored boats at the palafitos Some of the double-ended boats had been modified with a bulkhead and motorwell, and still held their magnificent lines. In the north of Portugal on the river Douro, we found a near-perfect dory. I asked a local if the boats were ever called anything that resembled "dory" or "Douro." Nope, the fellow told me. They are called a caica or caique. So much for that great idea. In the background is a fleet of retired barcos rabelas, which, until the 1960s, were used to haul wine from the Douro Valley down to Porto, where the Port wine was made. The Port-making still takes place across the river in the cellars at Vila Nova de Gaia, where these pictures were taken. The rabelas are still sailed at an annual regatta. North of Lisbon we came to Peniche, where Jeri spotted a shipyard. These folks were building fishing trawlers, from 30 to 45 feet long, milling all the timber on-site.   Inside a 30-footer we watched the men trimming the timbers with some sort of a sideways hand-axe: In a low barn, two men milled more lumber for the boats. The extent of their protective apparel consisted of a blue sweater. Another man finished a deck rafter and wheeled it to the 45-foot hull. And sent it aboard. The name on the nearly complete Almaraz Sol, a 45-footer, is chiseled into the hull berfore painting. The boat-builders say it takes them six to seven months to build a 30-foot trawler, and a year to finish a 45-footer. I iamagine a Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria would not take too much longer. Spain Almost as soon as we crossed the border from northern Portugal to western Spain, the boat style changed radically. Although the basic boat shape was the same, the floorboards were placed across the floor rather than lengthwise. There were no floor ribs, but there was one long flat center "rib" that ran from end to end. It was matched by another floor rib on the bottom of the boat, sandwiching the floorboards along their center. Most of the boats also had two additional exterior floor ribs near the outside edge.The really astonishing thing I saw in Spain was the use of bowposts that were reverse curved. This gave the exterior of the bow a concave shape. I even saw one of these that was lapstrake. Two elderly gentlemen there told me this a falt-bottomed boat such as this as is called a jamela. They are used for fishing an clamming. Another more complex fishing hull used there is the dorna. But as much as I gawked and thought about how these boats fit into the big picture, that was almost beside the point. The fact is, it's just fun to be around boats. In 'em or out of 'em, doesn't matter.