I recently got a private email from a fellow who identified me as a PDQ owner on the west coast, based on my conversations here on our list. I replied to him, thinking that his questions would be of interest to many on the list, so I got his permission to edit his name out of our conversations, but post the rest: He said: I have become interested in the new P-38 being made by Maine Cat in Maine, the northeast. My primary interest is in the diesel-electric approach they are taking. I was assuming that the lack of a flybridge was due to the inclement weather in the northeast. However, your PDQ 34 is running in the equally inclement, I assume, weather and has a flybridge. So, do you use the flybridge? I expect it is desirable for mooring and docking, but are you out in the cool weather when running? I see the ads for PDQ boats have the owners riding the flybridge, but well bundled up. I replied: The flybridge of the PDQ power catamarans is a fine place to be, very much like the cockpit of a large center cockpit motorsailer, only higher above the water, with no winches to grind and no sail rig to fuss with or look around. Although there is nothing wrong with the visibility from the lower console (almost 360 degrees), the flybridge does allow one to be out in the weather and offers a better view for maneuvering for docking, bar crossing, man overboard operations and in the instance you cited -- photo shoots. It's also easier to talk with line handlers from there. He further said: > Both Maine Cat P-38 and the Manta 44 company owners themselves have > told me that the addition of a flybridge is poor design, adding weight > and windage. Malcolm Tenant wrote me that a designed-in flybridge is > not a deteriment to the boat. and I shot off my mouth in return: Malcolm has the right of it. He is the Naval Architect in that trio, the others are businessmen with obvious vested financial interests, discussing boats they already have in production. They are not evil and certainly not dumb, but they have a distinctly different viewpoint, and after all we are discussing opinions about what would work best. I love my flybridge, and I have been on a Tenant designed flybridge, which was beautiful and very functional. It was (and mine is) an integral part of the design of the boat, and not an afterthought kluged onto an otherwise completed design. Of course, any flybridge adds windeage and increases mass placed high above the center of gravity, with little increased functionality -- only greater convenience. Consider please that all catamarans with stand up living space above a bridge deck are pretty high already, and offer great slab sided profiles to the wind. This tendency is counteracted by the tremendous maneuverability of two relatively powerful engines spaced very wide apart. Harmonic rolling enhanced by the center of gravity issue is greatly ameliorated by the extreme beam of many catamarans (much less so with the tunnel hull planing designs of course). Catamarans with beams about half their length will have virtually no pendular roll motion, like my PDQ and the Tenant designed boats I am familiar with. Unfortunately they also have very slender hulls and are considerably more prone to pitching movement than a monohull of similar length and displacement. This is the hobby horse pitching I have droned on about before. This is not a terrible big deal, as it is a harmonic motion and can be dealt with by changing speed and angle of attack to the wave train. A flybridge does not allow you to do anything you could not do from a lower conning station, except enjoy the out of doors. Note that my PDQ has NO cockpit aft. We do have the bench seat hung over the 'transom' (more of a risk than a benefit, ask the PDQ sales manager who's cell phone splashed in Lake Ontario while he was sitting on my bench. I have lost any amount of stuff that was in my pocket or was otherwise parked there. We call it the Davy Jones bench. But I digress. We use the flybridge for our cockpit socially, particularly when underway in reasonable weather. I hung the BBQ on a handrail up there. Of course one cannot fish from this PDQ cockpit, but as we have very little interest in fishing we haven't explored any of the other options, like rod holders and cannonball downriggers hung over the side here or there. This discussion has a loooong history. Flybridges were first added to trawler style fishing boats to afford better visibility for finding fish (think today's tuna tower sportfisher). It was immediately clear that maneuvering in tight spots was much easier from there too, and flybridges were soon appearing on recreational boats, launching the discussion we are extending today. Suffice it to say that we love the flybridge on our boat, and use it a lot. It provides a fine choice of being indoors or out. Given the wintertime comfort and wonderful visibility from the lower steering station we don't spend very much time up on the flybridge in parkas or raingear, but it has happened, as we boat all year around. For instance, transiting through the downtown Portland area on the Willamette River enroute to our favorite weekend dock for the opera, it is easier to judge the one low bridge lift from up top. The flybridge was designed on the boat from the very beginning so there were no structural support issues, coachroof shapes to change or the like, and very importantly it was included in the stability calculations and testing. My flybridge was indeed unique in that the factory modified their build to provide for the flybridge to be 'easilly' detatched by me when we got to Wisconsin, to bring the total truck height to sixteen feet (as I recall) and then reattached in far away Portland. Certainly adding a flybridge to a beamy catamaran will probably not make a significant difference in stability, windeage or any other performance or safety issue. The high speed planing type catamarans with their more narrow beam and narrow tunnel, and with their rounder bottom profile, will be more affected, but still probably not to any dangerous level. Structural issues will clearly vary from one design to the next, but should always be considered carefully. It will obviously change the appearance of the boat. Folks with an emotional connection to the design sans flybridge will be unlikely to prefer your changes. Adding a flybridge to an existing design or boat will mean duplicating and linking to the existing: steering controls; some engine instruments and controls; some means of disconnecting the autopilot -- if not a whole autopilot control; at least one VHF radio or remote radio control, preferrably two; your choice of depth indicators; a boatspeed indication for no wake zones; another compass of course; some sort of rudder angle indicator; a radar repeater (if you ever consider conning from the flybridge in dense fog -- the only place aboard where you stand a chance of hearing other boats' fog signals); chartplotter display likewise; loudhailer/foghorn controls; and some sort of spotlight. Toss in seating, windscreen(s), cupholders and perhaps the ever popular bimini top. Entire tents with 'clear' side curtains are popular here in the land of rain, although they suffer from hearing and visibility losses when compared with an open flybridge, and they very much lack the dry warm comfort of the inside steering station, with darn few exceptions. <snip out personal stuff and graft on a bit from a later email> He had later mentioned that on a charter cat they had had some issues about which console was controlling the autopilot, and I replied in part: Yeah, I know just what you mean. PDQ didn't fit any autopilot instrument on my flybridge (mine is hull # 12 and we had a misundersatanding in the fitting out of my boat, with me way out on the left coast when the discussion of precisely which autohelm equipment was spec.'d out and installed). Immediately upon picking up my boat I would get into really tense situations because of it. I would dash to the flybridge to resolve some critical situation, like a man overboard drill, and find that I had no manual steering there. It will cost most of a boat unit to add that, and in the mean time I have become a real expert at keeping KEENLY AWARE of my autopilot status and using the good offices of the Admiral to babysit one console while I switch to the other. I use my autopilot in it's manual mode almost all the time, although I don't set waypoints or the like. I only let Iron Mike play helmsman, not navigator. I would go for one of the zoomy new wireless handheld autopilot controls, except they lack a rudder angle indication. Too bad, maybe the next round or two of development will help me out there.... Regarding seeing parkas worn on PDQ flybridges (example the brochure for the new PDQ 41) please recall that these boats are built (and photographed) near Toronto Canada-eh. Also recall that many of us who now swan about in power catamarans have a long sad history of sailboat use (abuse?), where the open cockpit was the only place one could be when driving, and consequently the only place one's guests will hang out as well. Many of us even still feel a perverse pleasure being out in the weather while boating. Besides, we still have all those 'foulies' and parkas from our previous lives on the dark side of the force! Gotta go now, see ya 'round the 'net, Gary Bell MY 'Stray Cat' a PDQ 34 and 'Liberty Bell' an 80 foot sidewheel paddleboat power catamaran, both lying in Multnomah Channel near Scappoose Oregon.

Here in SE Alaska 99.9% of the boats with flybridges are rigged one of two ways: 1. They have fully enclosed the flybridge and use it as their primary helm, almost exclusively, with the attendant issues of add'l windage, funky aesthetics, access via a ladder/stairs when docking & underway, and increased motion/acceleration during rough conditions. But the visibility is outstanding, no denying it. 2. The flybridge is not enclosed and is used exclusively as a really expensive place to store fishing nets and crab pots. The owners might want to use it on the rare really nice day here, but their electronics are all mounted down below and they're too cheap to buy a second set for the limited usage above. Besides, most of the controls up there no longer work because they've been exposed to the weather for years. In fact, all of the penetrations for said controls usually become leakage points that plague the occupants below. Your mileage, and climate, may vary. Bob Deering Juneau Alaska