[nuclear1]

The weight of a large wave crashing down on deck is worrisome.
My old-salt friends prefer boats with small portholes due to their greater strength.
I would love a deck saloon yacht for its extra room and bright interior but am worried that a wave could rip off the deck saloon or smash through the larger glass.
Am I a worry wart or are deck-saloon yachts safe in a storm?

 

[blt2ski]

WHat sized waves etc are you going to be in? Are we talking a cruise if you will rounding cape horn? Hurricane Katrina? or a typical gale you will run into?

Reality is, if they get certified for ocean going conditions, the windows should not break with a 10M wave or less.

Marty

 

[tdw]

A modern deck saloon should in most if not all circumstances be as reliable a yacht as not. Reality is that there's no good reason why a deck saloon's windows should not be as strong as the surrounding structure. When a lot of those old warnings against big windows in sailing craft were issued construction techniques and building materials were very different indeed.

If your intention was to non stop circumnavigate then sure, a DS may not be your weapon of choice but for almost anything else you should be good.

On a personal level I adore the deck saloon concept but for Australia those big windows allow a tadge too much heat buildup in the cabin and that is why we don't own one. If I lived in Canada, DS, no risk.

 

[nuclear1]

Thanks guys for that bit of assurance.
Living in Vancouver, I never thought about the "problem" of having too much heat.

 

[jrd22]

I'm obviously biased but there are a lot of other things that I would be more concerned about than the pilothouse windows (if they are well done and designed for offshore). Our boat made two circuits of the Pacific with the PO from the PNW and encountered several storms during which almost everything broke (except the Monitor wind vane). No mention was made in the log of any problem with the windows.

 

[SimonV]

A lot of what is written in the forums come from what folks have read in old, and in some cases very out dated materiel. You will find any well found vessel has been designed to sustain its integrity, given any environmental facet that could reasonably be expected. Ergo they don't design and build boats to brake up and sink.

 

[tdw]

Simon pretty much nails it. The old timer's books need to be taken in context to the age in which they were written. Indeed if you read between the lines many of the boats that are thought of as classic cruisers had some serious shortcomings. Me, I grew up on a reading diet of those post WWII cruising guides but I have no wish to be sailing their craft. They are fabulous stories, written by great sailors and adventurers, in no way am I putting them down, but there is little correlation between their boats and ours.

 

[CapnBilll]

A lot of sportfishers have large windows 8 * 10ft with sliding glass doors. They survive coastal storms OK. 10-100 miles off shore.

There is a big difference between lexan embedded in steel rails, and hand poured glass in wooden frames. I still wouldn't want to take a large breaking wave in the stern, but with engine at full throttle headed to wave direction, and satelite weather you wouldn't normally have to.