Iron Lady’s Flybridge

I thought it might be interesting to show you how Iron Lady’s flybridge is set up.

This is a shot of the scuttle. Underneath is the water tight door and entrance to the boat from the aft deck. The top of the scuttle is a wonderful place to sit; and with the addition of the folding lounge chair, is generally the favored place to be on the flybridge.

The competition is fierce so we added another fold down lounge chair which resides on the port side seating area.

If you look closely, you can also see that the stainless rails surrounding the flybridge have clear lexan sheets wire tied in place to provide protection from the wind without obstructing sight lines or visual appearance of the boat. They actually extend some 8 inches or so above the stainless rails.

The upper helm station contains all the essentials to run the boat. Top center is the big Furuno Navnet display which can display charts, radar images, AIS and ARPA targets, depth sounder, wather adn engine displays. We generally seem to use the chart with radar overlay when approaching an anchorage, but the screen can be divided into 1, 2 or 4 segments for displaying a variety of information.

On the console starting from top left is the compass and under that is the anchor windlass. Topw center is the emergency engine shutdown and bottom center is the bow thruster control.

Top right is Maretron display which I covered more thoroughly in the post on Iron Lady’s helm station, but all the same information and monitoring is available here as well. A common display for us to use is water depth, SOG, engine RPM and rudder angle.

Below the Maretron is the autopilot and steering – again, no wheel. All rudder inputs are made with the small know at the bottom.

To the right side are the engine gear and throttle. The console also has a stainless grab bar across the front.

Below the console, are switches for exterior lighting, the horn, 12 volt and 24 volt outlets and the connection point for the VHF command mike. The left most switch controls the aft deck windlass which is a very important part of dockside handling using spring and breast lines – more on that in another post.

Below that is a drawer for all the sundries that end up on the flybridge.

Forward of the console is a table with fold up leaves port and stbd for al fresco dining. This can comfortably accommodate 5 to 6 people. When not in use, the fold down out of the way. Under the table area is the large galley hatch so it is sheltered from the sun and rain and provides great airflow to the great room and galley when cooking.

Finally, at the forward end of the flybridge are two gates which can be closed to provide some protection in windy conditions and opened to provide more airflow. They also provide access to the forward area of the house roof for sun bathing if you are in to such things. At the forward end, there is a fold down ladder that provides access to the foredeck which is particularly important when the side awnings are deployed and lessen access down the sidedecks.

The whole bridge area is covered by a sunbrella awning attached to a very substantial aluminum frame that is part of the mast system.