Portland Pudgy Dingy - Billed as the Dingy that Can Save Your Life
By John TarboxIt was time for a new tender for my LeComte Northeast 38 sloop. I have a small fiberglass hard shell dingy that came with my Bristol 32 "Bear" that is OK for one person but not really up to carrying two people and supplies. Its small size made it ideal to carry on deck on Bear, a great virtue, but times have changed and now there are two of us.
Hardshell or Inflatable Dingy - Always the Question
We read all the information we could get our hands on and it turns out that the debate between inflatables and hard shell dingys has been going on for a long time, and there is no ideal solution, everything is a compromise. We intend to criuse our boat offshore, so a life raft is also something that we looked into.
The Portland Pudgy - a Hard Shell Dingy Said to be Unsinkable (Filled with closed cell foam)
At the Maine Boatbuilders show in 2006 (screenshow here) we saw a Portland Pudgy (http://www.portlandpudgy.com) , which is designed to be the best of all worlds. It is basically an unsinkable hard shell dingy with a double hull filled with closed cell foam. A sailing rig and exposure canopy are available as options. While no doubt a compromise in many respects, we were quite intrigued and spent some time at Hamilton Marine checking them out.
We ended up buying a red one because we feel red is a relatively easy color to see in an emergency (though probably not as good as international orange) and because Carolyn has chosen red, white and blue as the color scheme for our sailboat. Needless to say, neither white nor blue are easy to see in stormy seas should our pudgy ever be put to the test as a life raft.
Carrying the Portland Pudgy Hard Shell Dingy on Deck
We plan on carrying our Portland Pudgy on deck. It is not light at 128 lbs, but we feel we can lift it out of the water and swing it on deck using the main halyard. Once we have actually done this for a while we will report further on how this works out. Among the available options are davit/safety harness eyes which are four stainless steel eyes with backing plates. Our pudgy did not come with this option, so we will be taking it back to the factory in Biddeford, ME on Monday where David Hulbert, the company president and designer of the Portland Pudgy will be installing them for us. While we are there I will be doing an audio interview with David, so look for that too here on BoatMaine.