How Balance Catamarans Are Built With Offshore Safety in Mind
When Phil Berman, Founder and President of Balance Catamarans, talks about safety, he doesn’t start with a checklist. He starts with design.
“The number one cause of marine accidents globally is collisions,” Phil explains. “And collisions often come from poor sightlines — a lack of visibility, whether you’re sailing from up top or from inside the boat.”
That single observation shapes almost every decision made on a Balance catamaran before a single piece of carbon is laid. Safety, at Balance, is not an afterthought. It is baked into the design from day one.
The Balance Design Philosophy
Balance approaches every new boat with two questions working in parallel: How do we make this boat as comfortable and livable as possible? And how do we retain as much performance as we can?
Only after those two questions are answered does the team turn to structural engineering — but woven throughout the entire process is a third, quieter question: How do we make this boat as safe and easy to operate as possible?
The answer, it turns out, is that comfort, performance, and safety are not competing priorities. They reinforce each other.
Sightlines: Seeing All Four Corners
On a Balance, the helm position is designed to give the skipper a clear view of all four corners of the boat, the horizon, and the water around them. This isn’t incidental — it is a deliberate design requirement.
Poor sightlines cause accidents. Good sightlines prevent them. It’s that simple.
The Single Helm Station: One Person, Full Control
One of the most distinctive features of a Balance catamaran is the single helm station — and it exists for a reason. From that one position, a solo sailor can:
- Put in the first two reefs
- Operate the mainsail and jib
- Execute rapid tacks and gybes
- Stow all lines after a reef
No running to the mast. No shouting across the cockpit. One person, in one place, in full control of the boat. In a building squall at 0200, that matters enormously.
Ergonomics: The Safest Boat Is One You Can Move Around
Phil is direct on this point: the ergonomics of moving around a boat safely are just as important as the engineering of the hull.
Balance catamarans feature:
- Tall stanchions with three lines along the side rails, providing a secure handhold at any angle
- Dedicated handholds when walking along the coachroof
- Trampolines raised to deck level on the forward deck, eliminating the step-up that causes trips and falls
- Clear, unobstructed walkways along both hulls — no shrouds to lean around, no hatches to step over
“Not having a lot of ups and downs, tripping hazards — that sort of thing,” Phil says. “It sounds simple, but it’s one of the most important things we design for.”
The A-Frame Mainsheet System: A Safer Boom
The A-frame mainsheet system on a Balance is more than a performance feature — Phil considers it a meaningful safety advantage.
On a traveler system, the boom can flog freely when reaching or running downwind. Preventing that requires rigging a preventer — something that has to be attached and detached repeatedly, often from the aft deck, often in challenging conditions.
On an A-frame system, the sail is effectively always sheeted. The boom doesn’t flog. There’s no preventer to manage. The risk of an accidental gybe — one of the most dangerous events on any sailboat — is significantly reduced.
The Lowered Boom: Accessibility as Safety
On many flybridge-style catamarans, the boom sits so high that accessing the headboard or securing the sail cover requires someone to climb and shimmy along the boom. That’s a real risk, offshore or in a marina.
On a Balance, the boom is brought down as low as possible on the mast, with the clew of the sail raised to ensure clearance over the adjustable bimini. The result: even a person of modest height can reach the headboard, zip the sail bag, and manage the sail — safely, from the deck.
Serviceability: Safety Starts in the Design Office
One aspect of safety that rarely makes it into brochures is serviceability — the ability to access, inspect, and repair every system on the boat. On a Balance, this is considered from the very first design sketches.
Steering systems, inverter-chargers, water pumps, bilge pumps — everything has been thought through in terms of how a crew member will reach it at sea, often in difficult conditions.
Delivery captains who come aboard are consistently struck by how much thought has gone into accessibility — the sense that someone actually considered how a crew member would reach and fix every system at sea.
That reaction is not an accident. It is the result of decisions made early, when it’s still easy to get them right.
Ease of Operation Is Safety
The thread running through every one of these design decisions is the same: ease of operation and ease of movement are not luxury features. They are safety features.
A boat that is simple to reef, easy to walk around, and straightforward to maintain is a boat that gets managed correctly — in good weather and bad. That is the Balance design philosophy, and it begins long before the boat hits the water.
