Pam Ayres was born in January 1929 and grew up in Onancock, Virginia. Her daughter, Rebecca, recalls her as a talented artist who “could build just about anything.” Pam designed the home she and her husband Charlie built on Pungoteague Creek on the Chesapeake Bay, near where she had grown up, and built most of the wooden furniture in it. She kept horses and many other animals that she rescued and nursed back to health. With the help of Rebecca’s two older brothers, Pam built the stable, sheds, and pasture fences—to say nothing of the seawall and dock they constructed with wood discarded by the local lumberyard. She loved to travel, grew vegetables and flowers, and, says Rebecca, “was always fiercely independent, maintaining her 18-acre property long after my dad died in 1989.”

When Pam was a young girl, her grandfather, who had been a member of a New York City rowing club in the early 1900s, taught her to row. Yet, in Rebecca’s childhood on the Chesapeake, she recalls family canoes, outboard boats, and kayaks, but never a rowboat. “Mom always talked about getting a rowboat one day, but for some reason, we never did,” she says.

Rebecca Ludden

While the weather was good Rebecca, Eric, and Pam were able to work outside. When winter came, they were forced inside to Pam’s basement where they had heat but much less space.

In 2021, when Pam was 92, she announced that she really wanted a rowboat. Rebecca and her husband, Eric, started a search for the perfect boat. They intended to buy one but couldn’t find the right thing. Then, in December of that year, while vacationing in Maine, they heard about Clint Chase and the kits he sold through Chase Small Craft in Saco. They called him up.

“Clint told us about the Echo Bay Dory Skiff and assured us that Eric and I, two high school teachers with no building experience, could pull it off. Mom was the one with the building skills,” Rebecca says. “It would be a project we could all do together.” They ordered a kit.

Rebecca Ludden

Throughout the build Pam was a willing participant. In fact, says Rebecca, she was the most experienced of the three builders.

In the spring of 2022, when the pallet arrived with all the materials needed to build the 11′ 7″ skiff, Rebecca admits that she and Eric were overwhelmed. But Pam was thrilled and never doubted they could build it. “We were both teaching,” says Rebecca, “and we lived four hours away, so the building process took a long time—over a year. We’d work on the boat on weekends, but often we’d only be able to make it there one weekend a month. But Mom never worked on the boat when we were away. I’m sure she could have, but this time, she said, she was our apprentice.”

They started the project in an outbuilding that Pam had set up for rescued horses. They laid out and organized the materials in the stalls and got to work. “It was fine for the first few months,” says Rebecca. “But when winter came it was too cold out there, so we had to move into Mom’s basement, which had very limited space.”

Rebecca Ludden

Pam admired the grain of the wood, so Rebecca and Eric decided to leave the inside of the skiff bright finished. They painted the exterior teal, Pam’s favorite color.

Nevertheless, the project continued apace, and Pam became more and more excited every time Rebecca and Eric came for a building weekend.

“Clint told us we could call whenever we needed help, and we did have a lot of questions. When we began,” Rebecca admitted, “we didn’t know a transom from a skeg.”

They had some mishaps along the way, Rebecca says. “One of the rubrails split in the dry-fitting process, likely because of the cold temperatures and because we hadn’t planed it thin enough. And we accidentally epoxied-in some screws that were supposed to be removed. But it didn’t matter, and Mom was just more and more pleased. After we applied the first coat of epoxy, she couldn’t believe how beautiful the wood grain looked.”

Eric Ludden

Rebecca helps Pam to install and adjust the fit of the simple foot brace on launch day.

When the construction was complete, Pam decided she would no longer be involved. She wanted the finished boat to be a surprise, and left Rebecca and Eric to choose and apply the paint and varnish by themselves. Instead, she would “work on plans for building a proper boathouse with a boatlift for her new boat.”

By late summer 2023, the boat was ready. The outside of the hull was teal—Pam’s favorite color—with white trim, and the inside was bright-finished so she could see the wood grain she had so admired during the build. Pam started talking about proper rowing techniques and how much she just wanted to get in her new boat and go.

August 20, 2023, was designated launching day. Pam came out of the house in her captain’s cap and with Rebecca and Eric christened the boat THE PUNGOTEAGUE PAM. She climbed aboard and rowed up and down the creek enthusiastically, praising how well the boat handled.

After rowing on her own for a while, Pam invited Rebecca out for a ride. Then it was Eric’s turn, and finally she rowed with both of them aboard, showing them how to hold the oars, how to pull through the strokes, and smiling all the while. “She loved everything about it and looked like a much younger woman,” Rebecca says. Pam was then 94. She had waited a long time for her own rowboat, and on that sunny day in August, on a little Chesapeake Bay creek, her daughter and son-in-law turned her dream into a reality.

Pam Ayres continued to enjoy THE PUNGOTEAGUE PAM through the summer of 2023. Rebecca and Eric joined her as often as they could. In March 2024, at the age of 95, Pam died in a kayak accident. Rebecca writes: “She was so thrilled with her rowboat and if she had taken that out instead of the kayak, I’m sure she would still be with us. She was an extremely independent woman, and she lived life to the fullest. She took out her kayak alone on a very windy day and got stranded on a bank away from her dock. We are all heartbroken, but also realize that she left us doing exactly what she wanted. She loved being on the water and just being outside.”—JB

 Jenny Bennett is editor of Small Boats.

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