The crew after 3-days of building
On Friday, July 15th we launched a new boat, the Points East Pram. The Pram has been a productive and easy collaboration with Points East Magazine, a wonderful boating magazine that is free and full of great reading about all sorts of boating from around New England. I always wanted to design a Pram and I’ve always loved the magazine, so it was natural to call the project the Points East Pram.
You can read all about the Points East Pram project in a series of articles published in Points East, starting in November with the article that introduced the project. The important feedback that came out of the survey of the readership was that people wanted a dinghy they could build from a kit and primarily row or sail and motor secondarily. The resulting dinghy had to be stable and have good capacity was also important. I talked about using this feedback in the article I wrote in February after the survey results came out.
One tricky aspect of any boat is how big to make it especially when it comes to a dinghy like a pram that may be used a lot as a tender. Customers of mine want something as small and light as possible to tow behind an 18-20’ boat but someone with a 40-footer and crew to get from ship to shore would want a 10-footer. I decided to start with an 8-foot model because the planks could come out of a sheet of plywood and the model could be scaled up or down from there to get a smaller and larger boat.
One interesting thing to come out of studying the Pram at 7’, 8’, and 9’ lengths was how dramatically the displacement of the hull went up with each foot-long increase in overall length. I talk about displacement in the third Pram article in Points East Magazine.
We launched the Points East Pram on July 15th at Marston’s Marina in Saco on the Saco River on a beautiful 80-degree, sunny day. Here are a few photos and I’ll be back to talk about my take on the results.
Happy people rowing the first ever Points East Pram. More later on what we thought of her and more launch photos.