Why We Love Our Exposed Helm Stations
Helm station design might be the most hotly debated topic in catamaran circles — and usually by people who’ve never actually sailed one. Shayne’s spent years on both leaning monohulls and multihulls, driven a fair range of boats from race-oriented to cruiser-oriented, and seen his share of genuinely bad weather along the way. So when the subject comes up, as it does constantly, he’s got more than an opinion — he’s got the miles to back it up.
The setup on Paikea, an older Catana, puts the helm stations lower and more protected than the newer Catanas, which went the other way and pushed theirs higher and more exposed. Nordic Tech went in the opposite direction too, sitting theirs lower and deeper — a different set of trade-offs again. Every design choice here comes with consequences, and it’s worth understanding what they actually are rather than assuming from the outside.
The real distinction isn’t single helm versus dual helm, or even the position on deck — it’s protection. Boats with a coach-roof pilot house, like a Pegasus 50, put the helm station under cover inside the cockpit. A cruising catamaran without that structure is a different animal entirely, and it’s worth comparing to a monohull too: on a yacht, there’s no option but to stand watch out on deck, exposed. A catamaran changes that completely.
Where the watches actually happen
On Paikea, 99% of watches happen from the couch inside — full visibility out the front, side, and back windows, the horizon and the water always in view, autopilot running, completely out of the wind, rain, and spray. That’s not a compromise. It’s the whole point of the layout. The autopilot — nicknamed Steve — does the bulk of the work on longer passages, freeing everyone up to actually look after the boat and the family rather than sitting exposed for hours at a time.
The pushback Shayne gets is predictable: if you’re not standing at the helm, are you really keeping watch? The answer is yes — watching the horizon from inside, warm and dry, is still watching. And the boat’s own cockpit design backs this up: sitting down at the helm here is genuinely safe, contained inside a tub rather than perched on an exposed seat. Running downwind in big conditions, a following wave has no path into the cockpit the way it would on an open transom design — there’s real protection built into the geometry, not just the roofline.
When the helms actually get used
The exposed outside helms aren’t there for comfort. They’re there for the moments that actually call for them — coming out of Lisbon harbour and joining an impromptu yacht race, for instance, when hand-steering the boat properly was worth being outside for. Standing at the helm, visibility is excellent: the windward hull, the rig, the full trim of the jib. The only blind spot is the leeward bow, and even that’s solved by leaning to the low side or crossing to the other helm — where the leeward bow, jib, and sail trim all come back into clear view. On a boat that isn’t being pushed hard, the odd wall of spray off the bow isn’t a sign of trouble. It’s just what a loaded-up multihull looks like moving well.
The exposed helm isn’t a design compromise to put up with — it’s a genuine feature, and one that earns its place specifically when things get difficult. If conditions deteriorate enough that hand-steering matters, that’s exactly when full visibility and full control matter most. Compare that to a boat like a Gunboat with an enclosed helm — good visibility through the glass, but a genuinely different feel to actually driving the boat, without the same direct read on what the sea and rig are doing.
What we’d still change
None of this is to say the setup is flawless. The helm seat could stand to be a hundred millimetres wider — a small adjustment that would noticeably improve comfort at the helm. And the mainsheet system is a separate, ongoing frustration entirely — rattly, awkward, and something Shayne’s determined to eventually redesign. If there’s one piece of advice from years with this boat, it’s this: whatever you do, don’t copy this particular mainsheet arrangement onto your own build.
The bottom line
An outside helm doesn’t need to be a liability, and an inside watch station doesn’t need to mean losing touch with what’s happening around the boat. The two work together — inside for the long, comfortable miles, outside for the moments that call for real hands-on control. It’s a thirty-year-old design philosophy, and on a boat like this, it still holds up.
For more on how we actually sail Paikea day to day, see our Performance Sailing Hub