Your dinghy is your “family car” that you load up with groceries, kids, pets, crew, and friends. Its’ carrying capacity, cockpit size and storage space are important. You don’t want a dinghy that’s so big it’s unwieldy and difficult to transport. You don’t want one so small that you have to go back and forth repeatedly to do all the hauling of people and provisions you need to do. Your tender should be “just right.”
The Portland Pudgy is compact and pram-shaped, but it has more space and the USCG rates it with a higher carrying capacity than many ten foot dinghies. This is because of its amazing buoyancy (closed-cell foam under the floor), and its ingenious design: if you followed the curves of its rounded bow to their logical point, the dinghy would be just under ten feet, but the Pudgy has no wasted space in the bow. In addition, the Pudgy has 12 square feet of storage space in the interior side walls.