Best pilothouse location on a yacht?

Kind of brings me to think about the boats on "Deadliest Catch", the majority are aft pilothouse but then you got Sig Hansen on the Marco built boat the "Northwestern" with the pilothouse forward and he seems to be always running at the front of the pack.

The vertical/slamming accelerations are going to be larger at the helm in a pilothouse forward, but it seems like you can do more with the overall layout of the boat with this option.

It's always more comfortable at the stern, but that leaves you living in the hull if you want to see where you're going. Re: the Northwestern: Having the house in front protects the deck crew more. A protected crew is a productive crew. Nothing like 20,000 gallons of Bearing sea surprising a deck crew to slow them down. It also limits the amount of traps they can safely carry. That ice weighs a lot up on the bow.

I think OP is probably referring to yachts. An aft pilothouse allows a lot of real estate on the foredeck for carrying bigger tenders, fishing boats, and an assortment of motorized water toys. Otherwise, it becomes weight on the upper deck and is more limiting in the size and number of tagalongs.

Judy

They can go on an aft deck as well, with less effect on stability, which is why I mentioned about living in the hull. An aft pilothouse pretty much precludes building a house on deck unless you raise the pilothouse another deck.

Do you not like the middle version?

Here's a link to some pics of various offerings.

small explorer yachts - Google Search

Which do you like and why?

I guess everything is a compromise, and how to make a choice will probably depend on how one would plan to use his boat.
If you really want a "passage maker" and you will spend weeks on end on the oceans, you need a good compromise between comfort and living space.
Since you'll spend most of the time in the pilot house, you may want to choose a layout where it will have the least pitching motion amplitude, in most cases roughly near the center of gravity of the vessel.

On the other hand if you are planning doing a lot of sportsfishing (or entertaining) , the size of the cockpit will be the determining factor( more than riding comfort on a formed sea!!) thus pushing the superstructure more forward.

I am no expert naval architect, but from looking at a lot of boats it seems that up to 60 ft', a majority of the pilot houses sit roughly in the middle, while on longer designs there is more variations, again depending on intende use. (e.g. long range cruiser vs sportfishermen)

Clearly the aft design is the choice if one carries a lot of toys.

So decide first how you plan to use your boat, then the choice becomes (a little...) more obvious.

Cheers

Also, if the toys are on the foredeck, in a rough sea they really get a ton of saltwater and spray on them as well as more bouncing around and stress from the sea.

on a motor yacht i think it's mostly preference. on a crab boat the ride for the capt is better with the aft house. the down side is the crew gets beat up pretty bad so the trade off is either i can be pissed off most of the time
(now it's my son's problem ) or the crew. in our case we look at the crew and the productivity.

just some thought's

travler

Yeah, but with an aft pilothouse on a crab boat, you can see exactly whats going on on the deck with your crew and as the pots come up.......

the way the pilot house is set up on all the crab boats we have and still own you set on the port side of the boat and we normaly run with that door open and you can see every thing that goes on and the hydro operator is right behind you with that said each to his own

travler