> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.pinaforemaritime.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # I'll Raise you a Flush Deck - URL: https://www.pinaforemaritime.com/ill-raise-you-a-flush-deck/ - Published: 2026-10-30T23:23:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-31T23:31:29.000Z - Author: Bobby Wayland For decades, flush deck motor yachts ruled the seas – big Hatteras, Vikings, and Oceans cut a commanding presence. In the past twenty years, the flush deck's popularity has diminished in favor of pilothouse designs. A flush deck, if you’re not familiar, is the arrangement of two full-length decks – the lower deck usually comprised of accommodations and the engine room, while the upper deck houses the salon, galley and pilot house. In this configuration, the upper deck is “flush” from the aft deck to the bow sprit. This design offers numerous advantages, with a couple of real drawbacks. The upsides are enormous internal volume aft (usually used for an expansive, full beam aft stateroom), a walk-in engine room, excellent privacy between the fore and aft staterooms as the engine room divides the lower deck, private access to the owner's cabin, and internal access to the engine room – a major safety advantage. (A surprising number of well-respected manufacturers sell serious passage making yachts with engine rooms that can only be accessed from the weather decks – inadvisable in a seaway.) On the other hand, flush decks do not offer easy access to the water from the second-story aft deck, and aesthetics: they can be bulky looking yachts, which I suspect is the biggest driver of the shift to a sleeker profile. At lengths below roughly fifty feet, it’s difficult to package two full decks without creating a high-freeboarded, awkward design. In the 80s, Cheoy Lee made a 46’ yacht, the smallest twin deck yacht ever built according to the Power Boat Buyer’s Guide. Once you get to around seventy feet and above, almost every motoryacht *is* a flush deck; at that size, the hull simply has enough room to gracefully accommodate two full height decks, and a cockpit can be added if better water access is desired. It’s the fifty-to-sixty five foot range that presents challenges, particularly aesthetically. A fifty-footer is an unapologetically large and expensive boat. In exchange for their several million dollars, buyers expect a lot of features, and they (reasonably) desire a great-looking boat. (Hinckley has sold a lot of boats that are conspicuously impractical for their size but are wonderfully pretty). Pilothouse designs – like Fleming, Marlowe, Selene and others – have a handsome silhouette with a proud bow and a superstructure that gracefully stair-steps down to the transom. A 53 foot flush-deck, like my 1986 DeFever (pictured above), is a chonky boat that carries the pilothouse well forward and the salon well aft. Hatteras, Viking and many of the big-boat manufacturers from the 1980s used the flush deck to maximize internal volume, aesthetics be damned. Viking was particularly guilty of this – some of their 80s/90s big-block motor yachts barely even had a back deck. Why sweat outdoors when you can enjoy your gin and tonic while fully air conditioned? Tastes have changed, and buyers want more water access and sleeker designs – understandable. However, I think there’s a third option that hasn’t been widely attempted – a 55 foot yacht that combines the raised pilothouse profile with a full lower accommodation deck. It wouldn’t be a true flush deck – there’d still be a step up between the salon and pilothouse. What you’d engineer is the additional two feet or so of headroom – normally where the lazarette is – aft of the engine room to create space for a full-beam primary stateroom. There’d be compromises, for sure: you’d likely have to raise the deck of the aft cockpit and salon some, and lower the hull form aft. This would slighly reduce accessability to the waterline, and on semi-displacement hulls, likely reduce efficiency and top end. If you did it properly, you might be able to raise the boat's beltline from stem to stern in such a way as to disguise the additional freeboard, similar to car manufacturers that reduce the appearance of height with dark lower cladding. It’s quite likely someone has tried, as there are many variations on yacht designs that try to capture the space of the entire hull. Trunk cabin trawlers gain an aft owner’s cabin in designs as small as 32’ feet (and Albin built an aft cabin 27!), but these aren’t flush deck in the sense that there are two complete decks. Over to the naval architects – can you combine the grace of a raised pilothouse with the virtues of a full-bodied yacht?