What is bridge clearance ona cat?

[henryv]

Bryan - I am surprised that you have had occasion to race against catamarans on Lake Erie. There are not many catamarans sailing the great lakes.
It's probably best to avoid general statements about performance - there are fast cats and there are slow cats just as there are fast monos and slow monos.
We sailed a Beneteau 331 before switching to a PDQ32. The 331 is by no means a racer but did sail fairly well. We are cruisers so the PDQ32 always carries a dingy and motor on davits yet I would say that on average we sail 25 percent faster on the cat. The PDQ32 has excellent bridge deck clearance so we rarely get any slamming even on short chop.

[Joli]

Hello Henry,

Lake Erie PHRF has a pretty good fleet of racing cats and tri's. We've raced on the same course with all the F's (24, 27, 28, 31) Conser Cat, Reynolds, Stelleto's, and some of the cruising cats like FP, Manta, and PDQ's. We raced a Schock 35 for years on the west end of Lake Erie. We found that when things got ugly we had to land the boat on the turn of it's bilge or it shake your fillings out. Can't imagine landing on the bridgedeck in those condiitons.

Some of the well sailed multi's were pretty quick and tough to beat around the course. We found the cruising cats were generally slower and all of them sticky when the breeze was down. In a 15 knot breeze on point to point races the racier multi's were very very quick. The fastest was probably the Reynolds 33. The problem the Reynolds had was keeping on it's feet. They flipped it in the Islands and Lake Erie Race.

Are you on Lake Ontario or in Ontario, Canada? We've raced the Levels in Youngstown on Lake Onatrio and enjoy sailing to Lemington and Pelee in Ontario Canada.

Bryan

[henryv]

Bryan - I am surprised to hear there are that many multis in Lake Erie - must be all that shallow water.
I have our PDQ32 up on Lake Simcoe ( Ontario north of Toronto). Or lake is on the Trent Canal system so Georgian Bay is just a day away. We'll be spending most of our time up in that end of the system.

[Talbot]

There is no doubt that a heavy mono has the momentum to go through a steep wave, when it might stop a much lighter multihull. Very short steep seas are not great for cruising multis.

Lakes tend to be shallow and thus good breeding grounds for short steep waves.