Deck-saloon yachts = better living space.

[Junk Viking]

Why are deck-saloon yachts so rare?
Why must we content ourselves with the 100y old basement like feeling?
Catamarans excel in great living space, why not pursue the same on mono-hulls?

Sirius 35DS with deck salon and a near perfect center cabin right under the settee is my ideal.

Reinke S10 fitted my wallet, and I think I can rebuild my Lona to fit a reasonable center cabin.

There are more deck-saloon options out there, but why isn't it the norm?

[LoudMusic]

I used to see a lot of comments about how ugly they are. Those seem to be less common now but it still comes around.

There seems to be an aire of "if you're not suffering, you're not boating". I just don't understand that. Make life easy and enjoyable on yourself. Deck salon sloops is one way to do that.

[UNCIVILIZED]

I think that a fair bit of it is dictated by structural requirements. Catamarans don't fall off of waves sideways onto their beam ends, & in a DS design like the one pictured there's not a lot of structure to support all of that glazing. Plus which the strength of a lot of materials used for glazing, polycarbonate & acrylic, deteorates with not insignificant speed due both to UV exposure, & moisture absorbtion. And few enough people know this, with even less being willing to foot the bill to regularly replace it.

Then, if you switch to the proper grade & thickness of glass, you're adding a lot more weight very high up in the structure, & said variety of glass is pricey. Along with necessitating far more labor intensive mounting techniques; read costs.

Plus, the structure of the DS itself is perhaps even weaker than a regular cabin house, let alone a flush or semi-flush deck. And then you go & cut a bunch of holes in it for huge expanses of glass. Regular coach houses are weak enough in & of themselves.

The above is a little bit of conjecture, & a lot bit of knowledge. As I've never designed any DS boats to compare the math to standard coach house designs. But as far as the nature of the materials involved, that's the truth as I know it. And the numbers don't lie (about strengths & weights).

Ever see an aircraft with lots of big windows for folks to look out through? It's tough to integrate them into the structure, & still have enough structure for the plane to be tough enough. Same's true in boats. And punch a hole through one, & pretty much the whole window fails & falls out in pieces. The same's not true of fiberglass or metal necessarily. Has to do with material strength.

There's a good bit of explanation on these things in the Dashew's Offshore Cruising Encyclopedia, Vol. II it's free at www.setsail.com/free-books along with several of their other excellent works.

[sailorboy1]

In more modern boats they arent all that rare, they are called something else.

[atmartin]

Uncivilized covered most of it I think. His point about glazing is excellent. Those kind of installations have a much shorter lifespan than most people think.

Structurally, the deck-salon is a weak shape. With good design and construction you can offset this, but it's inherently weaker than a flush deck or small doghouse. To compensate, I'm sure designers beef up the deck and cabinside scantlings. Now you have more weight aloft.

If the boat is rolled or tossed sideways, the leeward windows will have to resist a ton (figuratively, probably TONS, literally) of water pressure. If the windows fail that's a seriously big hole in the boat.

For the performance-oriented, you have a lot more windage than a typical design.

More cynically, maybe it simply requires more skilled labor to build and so has a lower profit margin than a simpler bene/hanse/etc design.

[Junk Viking]

Direct and constant contact to the surroundings is the major selling points of the deck-saloon.
It's a major boost to safety as well as physical and social well being.
Passage sleep is also benefited with the center cabin option.
The "happy wife factor" is a nice bonus!

Coach roof height need not be more than 200-300mm (8 - 12"), so engineering challenges are kept at a minimum.
The Reinke yachts are a good example of sound engineering, here the 39' S11 in aluminium.
These deck-saloon yachts has circumnavigated in great numbers and proved the concept.

[Lance Reynolds]

In respect to window opening coverage I believe you can go larger than the small opening ports using laminated glass (heavy) or a Mitzubishi product called Shinkalite it can be heat molded over reasonable sized openings and has excellant optical qualities..
I believe it is the stuff they make the walk under aquariums out of .

[Benz]

Such things used to be called pilot houses, and were more common on schooners of the 50' range and up. On smaller boats, they're less practical due to design and construction issues, and when racer/cruisers were the rage, they were anathema because of windage considerations. Also, the bigger the boat, the less you need the extra space.
But you can let a lot of light into a smaller boat with skylights, so you don't feel as though you're in a cave. I have a big skylight over the cabin and a smaller deadlight on the forehatch, and we get plenty light below.

[Lost Horizons]

Originally Posted by atmartin

More cynically, maybe it simply requires more skilled labor to build and so has a lower profit margin than a simpler bene/hanse/etc design.

This must be it. My favorite example, Nauticat 37, would cost about half a million in US. Which is about twice as much as the same length decent production boat.

[daletournier]

Although not overly attractive I think the Cal 46 was ahead of its time. I nearly purchased one several years back with plans of modernizing it. The room for a 46 was awesome, the engine room i still dream about....in some ways i think i should have done it, tuff as nails, huge potential motoring range if need be, awesome view from living room etc

[TheThunderbird]

I don't like DS sailing boats.

From dock, you can see into their dishes on the table.

Maybe it adds to a great engine room, but all gravity center is raised up. Good on a residential boat of a certain size...

I prefer to consider a fixed dodger and a semifixed bimini with removable soft curtains (winter).

Old boats had pretty squared coachroofs and skylights, Nothing New.
Motorsailers form the 60's were alike

[dick sargent]

I had a sunken deck-house Pearson Countess 44, for 20 years and loved the panoramic view, the convenience of engine access through salon floor, safety of 3 steps between each level and the visibility and comfort, especially, on cold all night anchor watches. I kept a weather eye and fortunately, never encountered "fall-off wave" storm conditions.

[zengirl]

How much does something like this cost? Do you know? Thanks.

[TrentePieds]

Quote: "The 'happy wife factor' is a nice bonus!"

Bingo! TP, though tiny at a mere 30 feet, is precisely that , a DS sloop. There are many, many of them here on "the Wet Coast", though they are commonly known as "pilot house" cruisers.

In almost every harbour and anchorage I frequent, I see them, not only in their "as designed" state, but also as more or less successful conversions of "conventional" designs. Owners add a "pilot house" that may range right from a "hard dodger" to a full-blown house. Up the dock is a converted 24-footer!

I am not convinced that in a DS design strength needs to suffer, as indicated by Unciv. I would think that modern materials and production methods more than compensate for the weaknesses that may well have been a downside to DS designs pre-WWII. And as always, boats are designed for a specific purpose and for specific waters. Wind and wave in Junk Viking's home waters are not significantly different from those of the Salish Sea, and the DS configuration would have precisely the merits there as it has here.

Members with some time on this forum will remember my story of how TP came to us, essentially over my objections, because MyBeloved, having stuck her nose below in a C&C27 and said "Not in a million years", while when she went below in the "pilot house" TP, her immediate exclamation was: "Ohh! I LOVE this!"

TD was, as I've alluded to on several occasions, not very well found, having had a pile of money spent by the PO on misconstrued "improvements", rather than on cruising fundamentals. And MB still loves 'er - and I'm beginning to :-)!

TP

[maxingout]

I never felt comfortable sailing offshore with large "deck saloon" yachts. If I was living in a marina and not sailing offshore, then it would be fine.

One of the reasons I chose my Privilege 39 catamaran was the slanted windows on the leading edge of the salon which is small by modern standards. I have to say that when I am in a storm offshore, a smaller bridge deck saloon works for me as I don't have to worry so much about boarding seas damaging the superstructure.

Windage at anchor is another factor. My slanted smaller saloon has much less windage than many newer catamarans, and when anchored in a storm, less windage means less stress on the ground tackle. After going through many tropical disturbances, I like boats with big anchors and small windage.