A conversation with yacht designer Patrick Shaughnessy, Balanced Catamarans founder Philip Berman, and sailing journalist Herb McCormick.
When you think about what makes a performance cruising catamaran exceptional, your mind might jump to the rig, the hull shape, or the sail plan. But according to two of the industry’s most respected voices, the real design work begins somewhere far less glamorous — the bedroom.
In the first episode of Catamaran Conversations, veteran yacht designer Patrick Shaughnessy (president of Farr Yacht Design) and Philip Berman (founder of Balanced Catamarans) sit down with sailing journalist Herb McCormick to pull back the curtain on how great catamarans are actually conceived. Their answer might surprise you.
Start With the People, Not the Performance
Berman is direct about his design philosophy: before anything else, he and naval architect Anton Detoy ask a single question — can we live on this boat?
That question drives everything. Headroom, bed orientation, sight lines, storage, passageway widths, galley placement — these human factors form the foundation of the design brief. Only once those non-negotiables are established does the team work to maximize performance within those constraints.
“We start out with this long list of must haves,” Berman explains, “and then that drives a lot of the decisions that actually impact the exterior design of the boat.”
Shaughnessy, himself standing six-foot-four, agrees. If the boat doesn’t feel like home, no amount of performance will make up for it.
The Bed Debate: Fore-and-Aft vs. Athwartships
One of the most practical discussions in the episode centers on how berths are oriented in the hulls. The traditional approach places beds fore-and-aft, running along the length of the hull. But both designers advocate strongly for athwartships berths — oriented across the boat — whenever the design allows.
The reason? Pure livability. An athwartships island bed lets both occupants access their side independently, make the bed easily, and get in and out without disturbing their partner. No climbing over anyone at 3am. No coffin-like crawl spaces.
There’s a performance trade-off, though. Athwartships berths typically sit above the bridge deck, which means the designer has to gain enough clearance to keep the boat sailing efficiently. It’s a challenge, but Berman and Detoy consider it worth solving. The payoff is a stateroom that genuinely rivals what you’d find in a shoreside home — including, in Balanced’s case, a generous en-suite shower large enough to dry foul-weather gear and fitted with benches on both sides.
Headroom: A Non-Negotiable
For two designers both north of six feet tall, headroom is personal. Berman and Detoy have settled on a minimum of six-foot-ten in the main salon, with particular attention paid to the galley, where someone is always standing. In the hulls, where freeboard constraints make headroom harder to achieve, they aim for six-five to six-six.
The challenge is real: raise the freeboard to gain headroom and you increase both weight and windage — two things a performance catamaran can ill afford. Getting the balance right, especially in smaller boats, is one of the more demanding design puzzles the team faces.
Galley Up vs. Galley Down
The episode tackles one of cruising’s great debates with refreshing practicality. For owner-operators, Shaughnessy and Berman come down firmly on the side of galley up — integrated into the main salon rather than tucked down in a hull.
For a couple sailing together, cooking is a shared activity, not a task delegated to crew. A galley up means both people are part of the same social space, connected to what’s happening on deck and to each other. The alternative, both agree, makes more sense in large charter yachts where a professional crew needs dedicated workspace and the freed-up salon volume can be used for a larger lounge or bar.
Sight Lines, the VersaHelm™, and Staying Connected
A recurring theme throughout the conversation is the importance of visual connection — between the cockpit and salon, between the helm and the horizon, and between whoever is on watch and whoever is resting below.
Balanced’s “VersaHelm™” arrangement keeps navigation electronics low and accessible, while a thoughtful interior layout means a crew member resting on the salon couch can see the chart plotter repeated on a swing-arm screen — staying in the loop without leaving their bunk. It’s a small detail with real safety implications for short-handed sailing.
The elevated seating plinth in the salon — raising occupants about six inches — is another subtle touch: it lifts sightlines above the deck edge, keeping everyone visually connected to the water around them rather than staring at a wall.
Storage, Nav Stations, and the Charter Trap
The designers are candid about a trap many production builders fall into: designing for charter, not for cruising. Charter boats are optimized for weekly turnovers — big heads, minimal storage, open floor plans that photograph well. But for someone actually living aboard, the absence of proper storage is a daily frustration.
Balanced’s approach is to offer more cabinet volume than most competitors, with proper drawers, hanging spaces, and a place for everything. The nav station gets similar treatment — offered as a traditional chart table setup for traditionalists, or reconfigured as a dedicated office with drawers and a repeater screen for those who’ve moved entirely to chartplotters.
Sail Drives: Clearing Up the Controversy
The episode closes with a defence of sail drives — a topic that generates surprising heat on sailing forums. Both designers make the case clearly: sail drives keep engines out of the living space, reduce noise and vibration, improve propeller efficiency by eliminating shaft angle losses, and allow the engine compartment to be sealed as a watertight zone.
With Yanmar’s newer SD60 units resolving the cone clutch issues that plagued earlier models — and adding the ability to change fluids from inside the boat — the practical objections have largely disappeared.
The Takeaway
What emerges from this first conversation is a design philosophy rooted in genuine respect for the people who will actually live on these boats. Performance matters — both Shaughnessy and Berman are serious about speed and efficiency — but it’s pursued within constraints set by human comfort, not the other way around.
As Shaughnessy puts it: “When you row away from the anchorage, you still want to have something you want to row back to.”
Catamaran Conversations is a new series hosted by Herb McCormick, featuring Patrick Shaughnessy of Farr Yacht Design and Philip Berman of Balanced Catamarans. Future episodes will cover exterior design, helm stations, daggerboards vs. keels, performance prediction, carbon construction, and designing for safety.
