Good luck! Trying to describe something as different as a harryproa to non proa people will always result in misunderstandings. Describing a 40'ter as a 20'ter is probably more honest, but will upset a lot more people than the other way round. Particularly racing types, the registration bureaucrats and the marina operators.
rob
From all the postings on the net, trying to explain proas to people, and from trying to do it myself, I think that I have finally begun to understand the lack of understanding. One of the main descriptions I have seen is that a proa is like a trimaran, missing one ama. I think this gives a misleading sense of the size, since when we talk about a 38' Harry, it is not at all equivalent to a 38' trimaran. I think it would probably be better to describe an Atlantic proa as a trimaran that has both of its amas on the same side, just merged into a single double-length ama. Then say that a Harry is an atlantic proa, except that we put the mast in the ama.
Along with this, I think it would be more clear if we described a Harry as a 9m boat with a 12m ama, instead of a 12m boat. I was just looking at my old 25' trimaran, and realizing that it is pretty close to a harrigami, if you just put both the amas on the same side. What with the unstayed rig, and always keeping the mast to lw, the Harrigami is maybe 10% lighter than my trimaran, but it is a pretty close comparison. If I were to describe a harrigami as a 35' boat, people would get totally the wrong mental picture, until they really understood (which isn't likely to happen).Anyway, next time I try to describe my raider design, I am going to tell people that it is like a 26' trimaran, except that I combined both amas into one long one and moved the mast over to the ama and see how they react <grin>.Just a thought,- Gardner