Deck salon

[wallm]

Along the lines of the monohull vs multihull discussion I have the following question. I have sailed and chartered many different monohulls and recently my first catamaran. We really liked the ease of access from cockpit to salon on the cat but I still probably prefer monos. I have never been on a deck salon mono such as Jeanneau makes. Do these offer some of the nice aspects of the salon of a catamaran (ease of access, view, ventilation)?

[Joli]

Wallm, you may want to post this in the mono section. I'm sure there are some deck salon sailors that have chartered cats and could give you a comparison.

Lakbay Dagat used to own a Choy Lee 43 Motorsailor that had as plush accomodations as you could ever want. Being a big boat guy, he can probably give you a very good review of the good and bad of that set up. I have sailed on that boat, and spent quite a few evenings partying away there, and it was very comfortable.

[Talbot]

Southerly make quite a good deck saloon boat. But any mono that leans over is going to be putting its windows at more of a risk than those on a cat, so cannot afford to be as large. Furthermore access across the boat has to be a bit more restricted to try to prevent somebody being thrown from one side to the other during a fast tack. Width of the boat is another factor.

Deck saloon monos also tend to take additional space from the cockpit in order to maximise the saloon space. Thus the cockpit becomes small and cramped.

Again due to maximising the width of the deck saloon, the deck area either side of the saloon tends to be minimised making transit to the foredeck difficult and in some circumstances dangerous.

[Moby Dick]

Plus, check the forward visbility from the cockpit help position. You will find that the deck saloon gets in your eye-line OR you have a high cockpit with the extra motion that involves.

And of course raising the coach roof means higher CoG, higher boom, therefore smaller sail area etc etc.

I think a deck saloon starts to work well on hulls that are 50ft or more in length, but below that there are many compromises: too many? You decide.

I seriously looked a smaller mono deck saloons, but decided they were too much of a compromise