Visayan 60' Catamaran (V18) Deck Plan

Visayan 60' Catamaran (V18)

Deck Plan

Floating Real Estate

One of the real advantages of a thoughtfully designed cruising catamaran is the large amount of "real estate" available to make the boat truly comfortable outside as well as down below. This is appreciated especially in tropical waters where it is rarely necessary to hide from the cold.

In northern climates a bit of sunlight is a wonderful blessing. In the tropics however, you should be doing all you can to avoid it. In addition to the large airy salon and aft stateroom on our Visayan 18 catamaran, a permanent hardtop covers the central cockpit seating and helm station for even more shade. The forward windows in the hardtop open fully for ventilation as in the salon. An opening deck hatch is placed directly over the helmsman to give him a good view of the sails. This open-sided structure is built lightly, but may be walked on and provides a convenient out-of-the-way surface for a large array of solar panels, particularly useful on a live-aboard tropical cruiser.

Comfortable steps lead to the salon and aft stateroom roofs for access to the boom areas for sail furling. Mainsail halyards are managed at the forward deck at the mast base, and the mizzen halyards are at the mizzen base on the hardtop roof.. All sheets are accessible from the cockpit area. Sail handling equipment has been kept to a minimum to reduce cost. The owners of this first build have carefully shopped for used equipment, realizing significant cost savings in this normally very expensive area of final outfitting.

All deck areas of the boat are flat or only gently sloped for safe movement. Large self-draining lockers with flush hatches in the foredeck provide a huge volume for outside stowage, and this boat can carry the weight, don’t worry about it. Space is available on the aft deck to carry a large dinghy while underway so there is no temptation to tow it.

Full height (90 cm.) lifelines surround the complete deck perimeter for safety, with the aft deck lifelines and stanchions made quickly removable to facilitate boarding the dinghy. Narrow but comfortable steps lead down from the aft deck to boarding platforms on each stern. These platforms may be comfortably boarded from the side of the ship, rather than directly and awkwardly over the stern as usually seen in stern boarding stairways. Awnings cam be arranged to add shade to the aft deck.

To avoid the penalty of excess weight forward, and to reduce the possibility of under deck pounding in rough conditions the foredeck area is open but filled with strong netting. Twin anchor windlasses are installed well back on the solid foredeck which helps to keep the weight of anchors and chain from accumulating in the bows.

The Visayan 18 catamaran will be as comfortable on deck as down below. Take a good look at this design if you are looking for a big cruising cat on a limited budget.

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