well, I am over 50 and I am in the process of finding the right boat to live comfortably aboard 6 months and to travel a lot. I have searched a lot and I am particularly interessed in Pilot houses that sail properly, so perhaps I can give some information and anwser Halyardz question :
"Can a "pilothouse" boat be designed to maximize the sailing ability and still do 6-8kts under power?"
Yes, there are some that are really fast, almost as fast as their sister cruiser-racers and the place to look for them is the North of Europe, where the love for sail is big and the climate doesn''t help.
In Europe we call the pilot houses Deck Saloons... I know that in absolute terms it is not the same thing, but even when they are more of a pilot house than a deck saloon, they call them DS anyway.
So, to my knowledge, very fast to fast DSs you have from Sweden the CR 40DS, The Arcona 40ds, the Fantasia 44ds, from Holland the Eversail 40ds, from Dennmark, the Luffe 43 Ds.
Between the reasonably fast DSs with great seaworthiness (having in many cases an AVS superior to 150º) you have, from Sweden the Regina af Vindo 38 and 43, from Denmark the Nordship 38 and 43 ds, from Finland the Degero 38 and The Nauticats 37, 39 and 42 (those are not motor-sailors).
Those are small companies that have only DSs in their range of models.
All those boats are very well built, ocean boats, semi-custom and all can be sailed from the interior, with good to reasonable view all around, some by joystick (autopilot), some through a proper wheel. Unfortunately they are expensive, but they are boats for a life time, in my opinion.
All of them can cruise at 7 Knots under power and sail easily between 6 and 7 knots and some like the Luffe 43 even a lot faster.
Jeff_h had said :
"I find pilothouse boats harder to single-hand. It is much harder to see from the aft cockpit and so you end up having to keep moving around to check for traffic. It is harder to route control lines past the cabin so you end up moving around the boat much more.... . You can''t see the jib from the windward side of the boat because the pilothouse is in the way making upwind sailing much harder."
I don''t think that this applies to some of those boats. The cockpits are raised and you have a clear view over the DSs, and almost all of them have smart ways to deal with control lines (take a look at the Luffe 43 DS) and can easily be handled from the cockpit..in fact most of them are designed to be easily single handed.
If someone knows about modern fast sailing oceangoing American Pilot houses between 38 and 43 foot, that cost no more than US$400000 (all included), please share with me.
Paulo