Bridgedeck Clearance Rating=BCR

[Sand crab]

This is an article from Multihull Design magazine by Sackville Currie. http://www.liveantares.com/pdf/BridgedeckClearance.pdf In it he proposes a new (to me) system of Bridgedeck Clearance Rating or BCR based not only on the height but also the various bumps, shelves, and thingamajigs that find there way underneath there. All of these protuberances really havn't been adressed adequately before and I applaud Mr. Currie on attempting to quantify this difficult issue. I am asking for input from forum members on what they think of the BCR and also help on identifying the boats pictured in this article. I think I saw a Lagoon, a Catana, and 2 Leopards. I'm sketchy on the model and year. BOB

[steve ripples]

Thanks for posting that, very informative. As ever, if you want something that performs well, even safely, you have to go past the sales pitch, the brochure speak and generalised assurances and get hold of real measurements.

It doesn't matter what they say, it's only what the boat measures that means anything.

Oh, and personally, I'd take LOA in feet x 0.7 = Clearance inches as a minimum.

[xrayxray]

20% of the distance between the hulls is another formula...I tend to think this one has more relevance.

[Poozer]

Interesting article and a good point about offshore vs coastal cruising and relative importance of BDC. One thing to point out though, is that most cats, even those with excellent bridge deck clearance have some protuberances and ledges formed into the hulls. These will pound before the bridge deck does. It's not as severe as bridge deck pound, but it is going to happen. On our boat we do get bridge deck pounding in seas over 3m (10 ft), but it isn't constant, and not something that is a big issue. We get smaller pounding from the hull ledges in about 2m seas.