The same features that make the Passagemaker a salubrious tender—the stable, lightweight, easily-driven, low-wetted-surface hull shape—also make her a champion sailing dinghy. She's fast, weatherly, and dry. 

The inspiration for the Passagemaker was the traditional lapstrake Norwegian sailing pram. A pram shape—with a flat bow—was a given in this case, because it maximizes hull volume on a given length. But the pram shape has an equally important quality: it allows the crew to board over the bow when the dinghy is nosed up to a crowded dinghy dock.

To carry the specified 650-pound payload on clean lines, the Passagemaker has LOTS of rocker—the fore and aft curve of the bottom of the hull. 

You can really see the exaggerated "rocker" in the underbodies of these Passagemakers. 19 years later, I don't think that the Passagemaker needed that 650-pound payload, and most of the time you see them floating really high in the water. If I drew the boat today it would have less rocker and more of a planing hull shape.

The construction drawings for the Passagemaker. That powerful U-shaped midsection yields great stability and payload while keeping wetted surface low.

We grabbed this photo with CLC staff aboard when we sold the 100th Passagemaker, circa 2007. Four adults each is officially an overload, but there's still plenty of freeboard!

I like how the curve of the hull sides matches the curve of my back while sailing. A very comfortable way to spend an afternoon sailing. Although it was blowing 15-20 knots during this sequence of photos, there is no need to "hike out" on the rail of the boat.

Another good shot of the comfortable seating position under sail. A passenger would sit forward of the center seat, in similar comfort.

Okay, last sailing beauty shot! There was a pretty good sea running on the day of the photoshoot, and I marveled at how dry the boat stayed.

In 2005 I gave the Passagemaker a sloop rig because I recognized that she was going to be a powerful and fast sailboat. The simpler balanced-lug rig was beginning its ascendancy in pleasure boats around that time, however, and soon we were inundated with requests for a lug-rigged Passagemaker option. The lug is much simpler to set and stow, and three out of five Passagemakers are shipped with the lug rig.

Here's the lug rig in action.

There's a take-apart option for the Passagemaker. It should be distinguished from a "nesting" option; "nesting" implies that the bow will disappear into the stern for stowage, which isn't the case with the Passagemaker. A true nesting hull would result in sigificant tradeoffs in the interior layout, and in 2005 Bill Parlatore and I decided that the small bow piece could just be stowed in the forepeak or a lazarette aboard the big trawlers we were targeting. We might still develop a true "nesting" version of the Passagemaker, though in many respects the PT-Eleven dinghy fulfills that mission in our catalog offerings.

Cutting the bow free of the hull in the Passagemaker Take-Apart is traumatizing for all involved, especially the builder. There are quite a few Take-Apart PMD's on the water that were completed but never had the saw-cut made...

I couldn't resist sharing this 18-foot version of the Passagemaker Dinghy, which was drawn for a paying commission about a decade ago. As far as I know the boat was built, but I never got a performance report. I expect that the boat was stiff, fast, and roomy. The loose-footed sprit sail was a request by the customer.