TANTON YACHT DESIGN.: Pilothouse. Sailboats.

Trend TYD # 325

Illustration of Comanche

- 40 Meter Trend. TYD#325

- L'Oceane 12M.

- Pilothouse 40'. TYD#309
- See about her on Search: The building of a 40' steel Pilothouse sailboat. Puzzle.

- Sleek sailing boats from the Med, flush deck, flat everywhere,

the huge expense of space for nothing. If you are looking for a real offshore monohull sailing yacht, the absence of protection for the crew is apparent and with most production sailing vessels that I know of. Of course, sailing is mostly dedicated to Summer vacation time and the need to be warm is lessened. Until it gets to be raining, cold, windy and lumpy; so much for the romantic aspect of sailing; when it comes to that.

But the trend is on. Further, when you see VOR boats going around the world, mostly on the wrong places for fair weather and without any dodger or even breakwater you will have to start to think when insanity is taking over. Except for a few moments of public relation close to shore where looks count, the rest is brutal. Even IMOCA's boats have figured it out. That by being under a hood with a coffee grinder and tiller steering will save the day anytime.

- So, in my small world, I just happen to have a client to develop a pilothouse vessel. Within the limitation of 38' on deck, the boat is for aluminum construction and to offer for a couple a nice retreat in older age when things have to have more reasons that at any other times.

TYD#171

-After a while hunched over the numbers, the space available, and a decent look, difficult to achieve on a relatively small boat with a pilot house, it became apparent I was turning in a circle to come up with solutions to satisfy the various conflicts given within the design brief. So bite the bullet and the budget to smattering, I spent on my own an enormous amount of time on this project. Drawing many different versions up to my own standard in an effort to produce a good boat and nice accommodation. To such an extent that I would not be surprised to see total confusion by the client over so many options being offered.

- Yes, it might be a difficult choice to choose from down to 2 possibilities, actually, 4 interiors as described above and below under the captions of Design#171 and then #172.
Well, well! since I wrote the above, the Preliminaries has been received and reviewed by the client. he took him only a very short time, minutes to come back with a decision, and decision in this process of designing custom boats is worth gold to save a lot of time. As they say; time is money. So onward with her; it?

- But before, I'll brief you on TYD#171. You have to go a while back when I designed a 43' pilothouse for the CT yard in Taiwan. We had many boats built before, and this model was a nice addition.

-I liked the Interior plan and for this new project, tried to duplicate with the same formula. Yes, it works well despite the shorter 5' overall length on deck, thanks to the total absence of overhangs.
Starting from the stern, the cockpit is designed in such a way to provide the interior with an aft cabin stretched all across the beam. This is possible if there is no engine in the middle, a normal position for it in many boats of this size range. Also, the need to offset the companionway to provide full headroom over half of the beam for this aft cabin. Coming down the steps, we have on the port side the access door to the stern cabin. Furnished with a double berth, hanging locker and drawers. Forward of this location is a settee arrangement within the pilothouse, facing on the opposite side, a steering and navigation area. Further forward, the accommodation offers two possibilities for this boat dedicated to a couple. With the galley to port and the choice of having the toilet with shower to starboard or, in the other model relegated further ahead near the bow. This is essentially it and I am now turning over to.
TYD#172

- If the preliminary Sail Plan remains the same, until finalized at a later stage, the Interior Accommodation Plan is vastly different from the previous model. But before describing it, I am jumping to the Lines Plan for this aluminum offshore, almost expedition boat. Hard to design the inside if you do not have an envelope to work from with all the constraint of volume, space, and structure. So, we will start with the shape all within itself. This is a beamy boat, past the limit in length, the only way to augment the living area is by increasing the beam.

- As far as the shape is concerned, the Lines Plan reflects my desire, especially on Metal built boats, to make plating the hull as fair as possible. The developed shell comes in 3 panels per sides laid down over stringers and with a minimum of frames. It has worked well on a string of similar designs from 68'; 63'; 16M; 15M; 40' and now for the 38' above. Be steel or aluminum the goal remains the same, to avoid fairing compound as much as possible, for the fashionable way to show of with bare aluminum topsides.

- There is a certain purity with the flowing of lines to serve the purpose of developing a fair, fast and fun vessel.

- The deck plan is more complicated, the deck plate, the cabin sides, the house, and the pilothouse have to be designed almost on convoluted forms to address the various reasons for being. In our case, the deck sides can be built on the flat, being defined and limited to the hull sides and scribed with the cabin sides on a given slope. Certainly saving some time in construction. The cabin sides are given one angle to follow fore and half with the critical sweep of the top of the cabin at the side for a look. It is important to keep wide side decks. Then the curvature of the cabin top is usually best served by bending beams over its length. From a fairing point of view, I usually use stringers with fewer frames on chine hulls with nearly flat compounded surfaces, while on the round bilge, or curved cabin top, I tend to use the reverse, but there are exceptions. The pilothouse is a case apart, not too high, not too low to offer good visibility in and out, with many choices for the forward treatment of windows.

- Another example of a pilothouse in a 16M sample.

- Now we turn to the latest of the Pilothouses; a 42' Sailboat. At this stage, I can only show the Preliminary sail plan and Lines Plan. The latter with a reservation for the keel and rudder. The lineage is from 3 previous designs: a 26', a 35' and this one, all designed for wood construction.

- Now going back in time, at the yard in Taiwan where we pumped out T43 and 44, a couple of customers advanced the idea for a pilothouse version of the model. The questions and answers to be addressed had to do with the prospect of building a new deck and was further complicated by the desire of one of them to have the free-standing cat-ketch rig, and the other the cutter rig version already fitted on the T44. So be it.- The client for the C-K masts and rigging bailed out of the deal. It was fortunate that the first and only PH version of this model built was the cutter rigged boat. As you can see in the Arrangement drawings; the accommodations are different. The boat ended up crossing the Pacific on her way home to Washington State.