Incredible "Secrets of Yacht Design" website located...

Yes I have just returned from the Galapagos where I learned that for legal fishing on the Islands you MUST have a vessel under 30 foot? How about that. I was also asked to sail a 34 footer from the Galapagos to Seattle and on to San Diego when it was discovered that I was a sailor. I did not have a chance to view the 34 footer or look for Mac26x cruisers but my wife did view the conditions favorable for Mac26x sailing. The small fishing boats supported that conclusion. We cruised exposed to the trade winds. 300 nautical miles. All 12 of us on Samba were sailors and the Samba, a Holand built motor sailer, had the rag bagged for the head sail but I do not think the crew knew how to use it. At one point we volunteered but the Capatain was concerned. In these maters you defer to that captain. So alas not a sail was raised.

One observation, even at anchor Samba rocked a minimum of 5 degrees. A smaller vessel probably would rock less. The Mac26x really would have performed well there. Rules require that to add a vessel to the island fleet you must remove a vessel with similar carrying capacity. You can not land a panga (dinghy) without a licensed naturalist aboard, so I do not think it productive to plan a Mac26x voyage or any voyage for that mater to the Galapagos. This is a place best cruised by charter.

The Book Sailing for Idiots is oriented to keel boaters. Think about that.

 

Wow! It looks like our little Frankie is finally getting it!

Nevermind...

Same deluded Frank afterall.

 

You know between me and my "files", there is at least one feeble mind.

 

D'ARTOIS,

I object further to a number of points Mr Mighetto: That continuously snapping at designers in general - there are good ones and there are lesser good ones, just like in any other profession.

One mark of a profession is that usually a license is required. We do not have that with boat designers and likely not with NAs. Sometimes you might say that in the absence of a license at least a degree is evident as a requirement but unfortunately even that does not hold true because many racers become designers and the most successful often do not hold licenses or degrees. The most important defining characteristic of a profession is that members of the profession are willing to speak out against those practicing that are doing wrong. Only Taylor, an NA out of Michigan, spoke against the popular Jim Teeters. He stated in really an unqualified endorsement of the vessel that the Mac26x can be operated safely. I assume he did the stability calculations and if they were filed, they will be available for public review eventually. Taylor likely is a profesional. Perry I put in that class. You are right there are some, but there is much work to be done. Management is more of a profession than boat design is.

A second issue is the fact that this poor Mr Martin is put for 10 years in jail next to the fine and communal work he has to perform.

How can anyone defend such a man? He had a fellony conviction prior to the disaster. BTW, his legals have set up an argument for appeal. It involves vertigo. The defense, which is not uncomon in drunken cases, is that Martin's slurred speech is explained as well as the oposite reaction than a sober man would make to an incident, by a medical condition.

If you had said, I know that the 26x is a rickety, unstable vessel, and that it might quite possible that whilst powering and being overloaded, a sudden movement had tipped the boat. Eight adults, three children, no testimonies in the press of what had caused the tipping over. Overloaded may be with overweight people on a rickety boat, the accused Mr Martin must have had really the public opinion against him. Not a very good lawyer did he have as well.

The owners manuals and warning placards had been removed from the boat by the time police could investigate. "Very good lawyers" are known for that kind of thing. Martin appears to have learned at the cost of two lives. Designers have a chance to learn about a revolutionary design. I was dissapointed in the judge because she wavered on the 10 year sentence, going with 6 instead. This sends the message that in any drunk case you can at least reduce the sentence by dragging the manufacturer into the case. No I think Martin had very very good lawyers because two deaths is two more felonies in my book and in the US three felonies usually means life in prison without parol.

In such a circumstance you do not say......Anarchy.com is expecting......
.......and I have to come out smelling like roses......

Only a fool can not see that I have a following. I am just one of many thinking thoughts that those who pretend to be professionals would prefer not to have expressed vocally. Yet only through such expression will any good come.

This is a very, very sad occasion and Mr Martin is definately not the only one to blame. I sincerely wish you will refrain from expressing any further nonsense explanation about stability and related topics. The sample of Mr Martin's accident is absolutely not the right one

Martin and any drunk operator of a boat or car do not deserve the courtesy of shared blame. I agree that few things are black and white - except when they are written down. Martin will do his time. He is lucky that the judge will allow the US population to forgive him at completion of his debt. We are obliged to forgive him at that time. But the colateral damage - the halt of production of the Mac26x and the continued disinformation tracable to Jim Teeters and the Top Down approach used until recently at US Sailing has not been dealt with. Hopefully Taylor's review of the stability characteristics of the Mac26x was submitted to the courts in writing. The GP RWP did much to support the design as well. I sincerely wish that you could see how I have come to expressing stability and related topics in relation to the Mac26x. The arguments supporting Jim Teeters when they should be supporting Taylor just boggles my mind. Where does Teeter's get all his support from? Folks should be cutting off all ties to the fellow. His career ended with the end of the TP52.

 

Oh No !
the mac 26 is getting everywhere!

on a tv ad for air canada shown on ch 4 last night in UK..... in no wind with what look like v small sails.

 

Frankie says: "I also know that a "tender" boat is made less so by reducing sail "

I was going to reply to this one, but honestly cannot bring myself to reply to such a blatant ignoramus, especially one who refuses to learn.

Frank, I may not have a "license", but I spent 3 years at college studying yacht design at th Southampton College in England, and have spent 20 years designing since, including commercial vessels and round-the-world racing yachts. If you think you know what makes a yacht work better than I do, then good luck. You are now the first and only person in my "Ignore" list on this site.

Have a nice life.

 

skinny boy

woodboat, very good question as to why 216. Some of the answer I suspect is in observations you made about the bpat already. For one it is tender, the sail area on it is pretty small but standards.

The Mac26x was given a 216 PHRF in what I have come to believe was a punitive action after the Newport Ensenada race where Mac26x Lady Katy Too! sailed in the cruising class to victory. Cruising class allowed some motoring at that time and it is my belief that her operator used the motor to reach plane in less than planing conditions, then shut the engine down, gaining significant advantage. The MacGregor Yachts company treated this event as it had been intended - a fun race, but I think serious racers were very upset, still are. On tender...

A tender boat will stagger in gusts. This is not the behavior of the Mac26x. Part of the explanation for why the uninitiated say a boat is tender is that they have never observed one sailing in gusts. The use of flexible rigging, that acts like a spring in gusts to keep the boat on her feet is often not considered by those overusing the word tender. A boat with hard side chines like a Thunderbird or the Mac26x and a boat with a flat bottom, like the Mac26x and several planing sailboats are not usually described as tender. This is because at rest they are far more stable than a rounded hull, the stability coming from the flat portion of the hull. These boats harden up when heeling with the hard side chine contributing to keeping the vessel from crabbing. IE the chine provides lateral resistance as well as the fins.

The generally accepted SA/D for a sportboat that would easily plane AND have the horsepower to plane under sail is >30 upwind and >75 downwind. The boat has an upwind SA/D of 19. Even adding a spinnaker downwind runs the SA/D downwind to only optimistically about 40. This puts its sailing horsepower in the same category as most traditional designs and one would not expect it to plane under sail very often.

What the? See the calculator on http://www.eskimo.com/~mighetto/p11.htm. These boats can be expected to plane and do in normal wind fully ballasted. The same is true for the M. The math shows that both vessels are capable of breaking from displacement speed and reaching a true plane with the standard jibs. This is indicated by the displacement/length ratio being under 150. The X is significantly better at planing; her D/L is 137.59 vs the M's at 145.61. It probably will take abnormally strong wind (20 knots perhaps) for the M to plane fully ballasted where that potential in the X is evident in 12 knot winds, perhaps less depending on the point of sail. The X has a planing Dribbly style hull form. The M has more of a traditional rounded River sailboat form. But so what. Almost all of the US Sailing accredited schools teach you not to plane. This is my frustration with the training you get at US Sailing schools. Furthermore almost all of the buoy courses are purposefully designed so one can not plan in normal wind.

Now I blow you away. Rerun the calculations without the water ballast or with the Genoa. Suddenly you have Melges class.

Next you have the actually hull form, the foils are not exactly lifting so the weather performance of the boat is not likely to be any better than most other trailerables and will have substantial leeway which will in turn result in a higher rating.

The rear foils most certainly are lifting foils on the Mac26x. There is substantial hardware involved. Hardware that after a few years of experience was significantly enhanced. This is not the case on the Mac26m. The M has rudder hardware more similar to the Mac19. It is less advanced in my view owing to that and the builder will tell you that where the X is meant for planing, the M is meant for short durations of planing, called surfing. You see that in the rudders. I will add some photos to the log. Anyway the hull form provides lateral resistance as well as the rudders. You can lift a rudder, as the manufacturer instructs and in most cases there will be no additional leeway. The over 17 MPH and under 3 MPH conditions are the exception. Here you do notice leeway. Sometimes you want that to make a mark. The forward foil is self gybing. This is why the Mac26x points better than any trailerable. (well at the time of the brouchure printing anyway) Perhaps a beter pointing boat has been developed since 1999. It is not the M.

Combining this and other small details such as seakeeping and the fact that the manufacturer doesn't want people out of the cockpit meaning no hiking to increase righting moment results in a generally slow performing boat.

The manufacturer definately tried to come up with a design where hiking out was not necessary. But with this specific X model, there is an unusual midship rail seat. The stanchions at the mid seat rail put your butt out there. Of course you can hang your rear outside any life line as well and I have seen Mac26x crews doing so. Hiking out is not allowed on many race courses. But certainly the Hobie Catters might rig something on an X and this is rumored to have been done. It is not necessary or advised. The boat planes in normal wind anyway.

When you put it in waves it compounds that upwind as the entry is quite broad and will tend to pound and due to weight will slow.

Acually there is a fine initial entry on the Mac26x bow. However there is a powerboat belly forward of midship. I tend to agree that this boat is stopped dead by a wave. We work around it by weaving through them, as do many sailboats. Only the heavy cruisers can crash through waves with little momentum impact.

The lack of sail power will then make it slow to accelerate after being slowed by a wave.

Power out of a tack is not a problem, though the broad buttocks is. Power after being slowed by a wave comes from the rig. This is acting like a big spring. Here we try to use gusts to advantage and fall off. There is no way that a Mac26x can beat a WinLee boat on a close reach by following the same course. One possibility is to pretend the boat is a multi-hull and sail the course more as a multihull would. IE more tacks to the mark but at planing speeds. The other way is down wind. We are allowed to move the water ballast off the boat and it is not needed for down wind work. Obviously, the design is not well suited for windward/leeward buoy work - except that the ability to drop ballast on down wind runs coupled with eventual relaxation of the rule preventing foil retraction will eventually make the boats competitive on the longer windward leward courses. Dropping ballast in PHRF NW races is already allowed. The canters will eventually give centerboarders the oportunity to remove the board retraction restriction. When that happens, we will get the same number of tacks up wind as a WinLee boat by sailining longer tacks into shallower water than the fixed fin boats can handle.

Why Mighetto defends it could be buyer's remorse or could be just having a good go at stirring a bunch of people up by posting ridiculous claims, not unheard of on the Internet for sure, or maybe he is just delusional if you read the threads he has been into you find he has no real experience and doesn't even have experience on this boat in a wide range of conditions and speaks always hypothetically as he has not done anything that he speaks about. He also seems to have a fetish for certain people on the east coast which I am not sure what that is all about.

I have a sailing resume stronger than most and certainly more experience in a water ballasted machine than most. The east coast is the least coast for sailors. My frustration with them has been some what eased by the great work the NYYC has recently done regarding centerboarders and IMS. The biggest gripe I have is the notion that bulbed fin fixed keels represent more than a recent and failed experiment in boat design. Nothing in history supports that and as of yet no NA or boat designer has been able to articulate anything good about them. Yet we still see new models rolling out with the sexy? testicle design

I do hope we got through our differences, I was actually trying to be helpful to you and maybe I was not as descriptive as necessary in the first two posts, but did think I was answering your questions. I hope this helps.

The helpful chat - even flame. The bashfull hang back or email me at mighetto@eskimo.com.

 

Sorry to hear that. Thanks for your input. Perhaps all that snow has made you grumpy. Please reconsider.

 

The Mac26x is featured in the film Tease. Suzan Arquet? does a fine job in the film which is available in video now. Kind of a dark film. A fellow is murdered by the teenage Tease who uses the mac26x boom to wack the captain to his death as he is piloting. Only the boom doesn't extend to the helm area on the Mac26x. Nonetheless nice sailing shots. Got to run. Have fun all - even at my expense if you must. But please the ride deserves some respect.

 

OK Frank I can't freaking take it any more !! Why don't you tell the good people of this forum what your experience really is. No dodges, no ********, no garbage about other experiences applying to sailing, just give us a real number of miles or days or years or any other form of measure that most of us can recognize.
If you can't do that then just shut the **** up!!
You can't ---You won't--because you know you are full of it right up to your eyebrows Period.

 

amolitor, I know I've taken a little while to respond to that post, but it's brilliant! Thank you for providing us with your insight. It never even occured to me. I was trying to figure out how the boat would actually GO faster (silly me!) while it was spinning around, capsizing and then the sail coming up on the other side. Or maybe twirling around its keel, with the stern coming up forward and crossing in front of the wind. It just didn't make sense. Thanks so much for clearing that up. It's nice to know so many of us are helping to make this a wonderful, informative forum.

 

Frank, are you really this stupid, or are you playing again? 216 is a very high rating for a boat that planes easily and sails 17mph. If your performance claims were true, you'd win every race with a rating like that. Are you saying that your handicap should be higher than 216?!?! Do you even know how PHRF rating system works? You sure don't seem too.

Show the photo Frank! The one you used on SA to prove that your boat planes. That'll do the trick.

 

Here is a picture of the "self-righting" capability of this boat. If it comes back up right then this accident would have never happened. You are of the lowest lifeform to continue to lie and slander people, even someone so irresponsible as to drink and operate a piece of trash boat. His biggest mistake was operating an unsafe boat and he will pay for that for 10 years. You need to stop the lies. You say it is all in fun. It isn't fun and I wonder if your employer knows you are using their assets to do this. Maybe a simple abuse complaint to the network admin will see how they feel about your use of government resources.

Funny to hear a "consultant" talk about a profession not requiring licensing. What is your certification number? You must be a certified consultant.

D/L does not indicate any such wind range in which a boat will plane. It is not capable to calculating that you are simply lying. If you had a Melges class you would have a rating like a Melges but you don't, why because "you can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig". There is NO planing sailboat with a rating over 200. However there is a Mac26 with a rating over 200. Therefore there is no planing Mac26 without the use of an engine.

You punitive rating theory about a race where the boats in the cruising class (not eligible for the race overall awards) are allowed to use engines in order to make sure they can make the post race party is actually laughable and fun to read. No one gives a flip about a boat that runs its engine for all but 20 miles of a course. It is not even a competitor in the sailboat race it is a cruiser rally.

Again with the lies. You have entered less than a dozen races and have yet to place despite the fact you have such a planing boat and a pig slow rating. You have no blue water experience. You have no distance experience under sail. You have no sailing resume.

The reason the captain of the motorsailer didn't want to raise the sails is owing, I suspect, to having one look at you and realizing that it would endanger the boat to allow you to touch anything.

 

Stupidity about a Ridiculous Boat

If it is a fact that the present production of the McGregor 26 alfabet is arrested, then it might have a solid reason for it.

Mighetto states that the boat should have ballasted when boarding with 11 persons.

Why? - The boat was matter of factly not sailing at the time of the unfortunate accident. You do not add waterballast to an already overloaded boat do you?

If i'll find a boat here in Holland with warning stickers/plaquards beyond the no smoking sign, such as is apparently the case with the Mc26 alfabet, I will redirect that particular boat to the scrapyard being unsafe at any operation.

With it's 50 Hp outboard it is a sportscruiser, outboard propelled blown up dinghy, no more than that. With such parameters you might capsize your overloaded boat in a sharp turn - as happened in this fatal accident.

Fatal accidents happen when a cumulation of small accidents - events - are piling up in a matter of seconds.
A rickety boat to start with, questionable design, unable operator, overloaded boat, drunk people on board, children trapped in the cabin and more to add.

Grace to its empty ballast-tank, the boat was still floating, however - the cause of the death of the two children is buried in the fact that the remaining persons on board failed to rescue the trapped children, save for one.
And, the clumsy move of the operator, to put the boat in a sharp turn, threw
the people overboard and did capsize the boat or at least did it turn over, throwing or jettonising the crew overboard.
In spite of all this, the act of putting this boat in a sharp turn did capsize it.

If the guy was not drunk and he had to make the same movement in order to avoid a collission with a floating object what then?

The result is nevertheless the same. Because the boat could not sustain a sudden change of direction wthout capsizing. Not at the operation speed anyway.

Is it therefore questionable to give such a vehicle the red flag?

 

Thanks for bringing this picture. I was also wondering how Frank would explain this, but as I'm not chatting with him any more, I'm glad someone else brought it up.

He's certainly certified...

Or maybe the captain knows Frank from forums like this...