Ultralight Dinghy

A 6 ft rowing pram drawn by John C. Harris of Chesapeake Light Craft as a tender light enough to lift onto car racks single-handed. Beam is just over 40 in, making the hull about 55 percent as wide as it is long, and the prototype weighed 37.4 lb bare, call it 40 lb once paint, varnish, a second pair of oarlock sockets and gunnel guard are on. It has carried 380 lb without noticeably slowing and will take more, rows at three knots or better on 6 ft oars, and is small enough to stow on the foredeck of a 27 ft sloop. Freeboard is an inch or two higher than the Eastport Pram's, to keep spray out.

The shell is 4 mm plywood throughout, fiberglassed inside and out over the lower half of the hull, with CLC's LapStitch joints stiffening the topsides. Harris assembled the prototype in three days of sporadic work in CLC's booth at the WoodenBoat Show and puts it at roughly 50 hours to finish out nicely. Four things are deliberately absent to hold the weight down: there is no outboard option, no sailing rig, no built-in flotation, and the thin shell wants more care in the dinghy park than a heavier boat. With so little inertia it asks to be boarded in one smooth movement, like a canoe. This is a prototype written up on CLC's blog rather than a catalogue design, so no plans or kit are offered for it yet.