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Catana 42 Boat Tour: The Deck

Last time we covered the back end of the boat and the cockpit. This time it’s everything in the middle and up on deck — what this boat came with, what’s stayed, and what’s already changed.

The Hardtop and the Moonroof

Starting at the back of the hardtop extension: the solar panels are sitting there loose rather than glued down, mostly because I can’t quite bring myself to commit them to the roof before the lightweight semi-rigid upgrade happens. They’ll probably end up glued on as a stopgap before that upgrade lands.

The big sliding hatch in the middle — call it a moonroof, a sunroof, whatever fits — is genuinely essential rather than a nice-to-have. It’s our window onto the mainsail and the rig while we’re actually sailing, and having that open with a full view of what’s going on matters most exactly when it matters most: reefing. The temporary plastic flap rigged up over it for rain isn’t glamorous, but it works for now.

The Cabin Top: A Real Trade-Off

The cabin top itself is a blister-style design — rounded, low-windage, genuinely good for performance. It’s also got a real love-hate relationship built into it. The windows need shade covers on for most of the day here in the tropics, or the sun comes straight through and turns the inside into a greenhouse. That’s the trade-off: windows that are technically there for light and view spend most of their life covered instead.

They’re plastic windows too, which brings its own set of compromises. Lightweight and inexpensive, but they craze and cloud with age in a way glass never would. The curved sections added another layer of complexity during install — some needed thermal forming to take the shape properly, others were gentle enough in curve that the acrylic accommodated it on its own. Whatever reservations came with the material, the adhesive used to seal them in — Sika sealant — has been flawless through a full year-plus in Caribbean sun with zero movement, debonding, or UV degradation. It’s been a genuine non-issue since install.

Hatches and Airflow

The front hatch windows do more for life aboard than almost anything else up here — the amount of airflow they move through the cabin is hard to overstate. There are two up front, one on one side, and deliberately none on the side that lines up with the nav station — anyone who’s spent time on a boat with a hatch dripping onto their electronics knows exactly why that gets skipped.

Forward-facing hatches cover the forward bunk, the toilet, and the midships bunk, plus a transverse opening one in the aft bunk. None of it is flush-deck sleek, but that’s a feature more than a flaw — flush hatches solve one set of problems and introduce a completely different set of their own. These hatches are original, pushing 32 years old now. The springs are tired, but they still close, spares are still available, and they still keep the water out as long as the dogs get closed properly.

Forward Lockers

Working forward along the deck: four lockers sit at the base. One holds the diesel tank and filler. One is the designated kids’ locker — snorkeling gear, fins, boogie boards, the usual. Both diesel and water tanks are stainless with sight glasses, which means a genuine fuel or water level check is as simple as opening a hatch and looking, sender working or not.

The anchor locker holds the chain and a twist-out sock arrangement that lets the whole anchor-and-chain assembly get stowed away completely for longer passages — worth doing given it’s 25 kilos of anchor and 10 kilos of chain that don’t need to hang off the bow while underway. The rope locker houses inflatable fenders donated off a superyacht — genuinely oversized, and once you’ve used fenders like that, there’s no going back to the small ones, especially on a performance multihull where weight and space both matter. Underneath sits a serious amount of line, plus the boom locker holding flammables, dinghy fuel, two-stroke oil, and a small backup generator that’s barely been needed since the solar array went in.

The Front Beam, Longeron, and Net Upgrade

The front beam, longeron, and net replacement transformed how this boat actually gets sailed. Being able to carry a genuine trinquette or storm jib up front, hanked onto the lowers, simply wasn’t an option before — now it’s fully integrated into the system. The forestay is bulletproof, stiff, and not something that needs thinking about anymore. Running a pole off the front with no whisker stays and nothing dragging in the water to snag on an anchor is a real, everyday quality-of-life difference — anchoring and maneuvering around the bow is dramatically easier without extra rigging in the way.

Every line on this boat gets put away when sailing — the anchor bridle included, shackled to dedicated mooring cleats rather than left rigged. The philosophy is simple: when the boat is sailing, it should be a sailing boat, not dragging anchor gear it doesn’t need. When it’s anchored, it doesn’t need to be rigged as a sailing boat either. Being able to switch the configuration cleanly between the two is worth the extra step every time.

Daggerboards and Draft Markings

The daggerboards carry large, clear markings — 1.0, 1.5, 1.9 — corresponding to draft. If the tip shows 1.0, the board’s sitting a metre below the waterline; 1.9 means nearly two metres down. That marking does double duty: it lets a good board setting for reaching or upwind sailing get found once and returned to reliably, and it gives an instant depth reference against the sounder when working through shallow or uncertain water.

What’s Left on the List

The bow is still a future upgrade project, and the chainplate replacement — already covered elsewhere for the port side — is coming up next on the starboard side. Next time, it’s the rig.

In This Series

This is Part 2 of the Catana 42 boat tour. Catch the rest of the walk-around here:

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