Mac 26 "Blam" Thread

Rotten

Those Macs will flip with two people hanging on to the mast.

And they are so cheap...

 

Steve is no doubt right about the mindset of most power boaters,so how about thinking of it as aboat for the aspiring sailor with a sail intolerant family. I was thinking maybe a tri with a conservative fractional rig set up a little high off the deck so as not to sweep too many of the kiddos into the water when they (I) accidently gybe. Then we could put a small jet pump in each ama with enough juice to pull around the odd tube,kneeboard whatever. Ithought multihull because nonsailors hate to heel over, and I thought the 3hull twin jet might provide some interesting wake patterns for the tow behinds, plus you could make it look pretty cool.
Chris

 

You think you're a really cool Mac sailboat owner

1. As you leave the boat yard after a sale, you see the owner rush out with a gigantic smile and high-five the salesman.

2. You notice that the VHf radio they threw in "for free" has a direct line to Moe’s boat towing Company.

3. The power backup for that big motor is permanently welded to the battery.

4. The big motor has been equipped with a push-button device for quick and easy opening.

5. You get a "Good Luck" card from the previous owner.

6. As you drive up to a marina for gas, the mechanic opens the big door and waves you in.

7. You think you’re really cool flying past other sailboats when the wind dies.
.
8. You think towing kids in tubes behind a sailboat is really cool.

 

Actually it is the more rounded hull of a traditional monohull sailboat that sucks. The faster the boat goes the more sucking. The Mac26x is a planing machine. No sucking is allowed.

I was greatly bothered by the start of this thread. But after a night see things a bit differently because I get to tell a story that I do not think I have told yet on a forum such as this. So enjoy all yee truth seakers. It is the story of PRB's design.

Pascal Conq and Guillaume Verder explain PRBs tanks as follows:

The designers call these tanks inertia ballast tanks and they are placed to make the center of gravity align with the center of buoyancy at a 10 degree angle of heel. Additional tanks along the centerline running bow to stern are being contemplated. The inertia ballast tanks provide substantial extra righting moment. The distribution of these low centre of gravity ballast tanks was chosen to offer both increased inertia to go through waves in the upwind conditon and to counteract the pitching moment induced by the sail in the reaching condition. This set-up was first trialled on Christophe Auguin's successful Finot 60 Geodis some 10 years ago. Christophe Auguin sailed Geodis to victory in both the 1994-95 Around Alone and 1996-97 Vendee Globe. PRB continues to demonstrate the winning ways of this design. PRB has water ballast tanks remarkably similar to Mac26x vessels and I suspect, because of the Mac65, Roger Macgregor was well aware of them on the Finot 60 Geodis when he designed the Mac26x. The story gets even better.

Finot designed the Pogos. These are minitransats and they are unusual in that water ballast is not used. They recently introduced a larger version (the Pogo 40) which still has a fin keel but also has water ballast. This ballast is not overhead when below decks as is required on a minitransat but is inertia ballast. So which is the primary ballast system?

Vincent Riou, who is kind of a McGyver (technically proficient) when it comes to fixing things, was unable to fix hydraulic rams used to cant PRB's keel. This forced him to drop the keel down to leeward before any maneuver in the Southern Ocean passage of the 2004/2005 Vende Globe race, slowing things down considerably. However the failure of one of six centerline water ballast tanks on the same boat as more dramatic. The tank could not be repaired allowing air to enter it in a way that meant that 1.5 tons of water ballast could not be used effectively when PRB was on port tack. There was an "explosion" involving the tank. This would be spun by a TP52 supporter as a reason for limits of positive stabilty derived from overly heavy fixed fin keels. However there was Ecover.

Water ballast is demonstrated to be the primary movable ballast form 50 miles from the finish line when the newly-launched-for-the-race Ecover's canting keel falls off.

Rather than abandoning the race. Golding, fills the water tanks, extends the twin outboard dagger boards and twin rudders and then further stabilizes the boat by reducing sail.

In this Mac26x configuration, Ecover sails at 9 knot speeds to become the first monohull in recent history to ever have finished a major race without the benefit of an external keel foil.

When I was a biology student my instructors were clear that half of what I was taught would be shown to be incorrect in the near future. The problem was that no one knew which half was correct and which half incorrect. This is the situation with sailboat design today. It means virgin boat designers likely are beter at designing boats than the old guard who have not taken the time to unlearn the ways believed correct when they were schooled.


The above shows the inertia ballast tank of the Mac26x at 11 degrees of heal. Compare and contrast with Geodis. Now tell me this isn't fun.

http://www.eskimo.com/~mighetto/p06.htm

 

2 You discover http://macgregorsailors.com/ and 5,000 happy other owners

And the number one reason to love your Mac is..

1. Old ones, if you can find one for sale, sell for about twice what they did when new.

It is a New Age for sailing. Good post - excellent lead in. The main reason so many hate MacGregor Yachts is that they have long pointed out that what one pays and what one gets in a sailing yacht are in no way realated. Jack London also pointed this out at the turn of the century. Thoes with unlimited budgets get taken advantage of way to often. The new 10 meter racers out of China, the Flying Tigers and the B30 are examples of just how foolish the sport has become. With boats like the Mac26 and these new 30 footers, there will be fewer and fewer young folk interested in being honored with the bow man position on a Tripp or TP52. Lets face it crew members are rail meat, expendable at the whim of the Amish Hat Tripp Gal, the equivalent of slaves. In the new age, the smart among them will purchase new. The value of those old race boats will become virtually nothing.

The saying "the best race boat design is the one that falls apart before the first owner can sell her" is so so true today. Mac26x Anarchy will and is changing that.

 

DUH! Ya really think so?

I was curious as to what the qualifications of this critic were to define
what a "proper" cruising sailboat is, and to judge vessel design. Here's
what I found:

Biography:
Student, lefty, leftist
Location:
CT, USA
Interests:
Political Science, Boats
Occupation:
Student
Current Boats:
Dinghy sailor, beach cats

Design Experience:

Amazin' how these young 'uns know it all so quickly!

Young student, here's a lesson for you. Some are confident and stand tall on
their own merits. Others who are insecure try to make themselves appear
taller by trying to cut down others they worry may be taller. All that does
is make their insecurity stand out like a sore thumb. This is often a mark
of adolescence, but some never outgrow it. Hopefully, one day when you
have a boat of your own, and get a little more life experience, you will.

 

http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=13529

 

Sir (FarSide)-

I have every right to insult the MacGregor26's design. I have enough credentials, knowledge and intelligence to realize what a poorly designed sailboat is. It is evident to me that the Mac26 is poorly designed. It is no sailboat, but merely a powerboat with sails.

 

Oh yea,

You are so right and obviously enough of a design authority to know just how poorly constructed these boats are. You also seem intelligent and knowledgeable.

I couldn't agree more. What a rotten boat. The only thing I can't understand is why Mac26 owners seem to like them so much. How could anyone enjoy these things.

You are absolutely correct. This thing is no sailboat. I mean they even look stupid: (Roger MacGregor must have worked really hard to make this picture look good)



Those Mac owners have no idea what it is really like to sail. Fools!!

 

Mark,

Don't you ever put that picture up again without photoshopping the Swedish flag out!

Yoke.

P.S. Make it Norwegian instead.

 

No he didn't, all he had to do was wait til the wind dropped under 5 knots.

 

MacKid, you give respect, you get it. I'm not debating your "right" to free speech, I spent 20+ years in the military in support of it. But that also includes the right to make oneself look immature.

Design is for a purpose or purposes, and is a huge set of compromises. Whether something, including a sailboat, is properly or poorly designed, depends on how it satisfies its intended purpose(s). Nothing more, nothing less.

As an employed boat designer, and given the requirement to design a sailboat that can also operate under power at roughly 3 times hull speed, what hull design would you select? A displacement hull? No, I think you know better than that, even at this stage of knowledge. How would you provide the center of lateral resistance? Full keel? Fin keel? Not at that speed. No, you'd select a swing centerboard or daggerboard... especially if the requirement was also for trailerability. Your design would also be to a price point, which would limit the overall "quality" of the boat, and even require you to trade it off in one area to have it in another area. And you'd be given a timeline to have the design completed in, requiring you to "accept" something you know you could do better if given more time. An old saying is that at some point you have to shoot the designer and ship the product.

Given the required capabilities and price point of the powersailor, the question is, whether any designer on this forum could do better than MacGregor. The answer may be yes, but probably not many, and certainly not you, at least not for awhile.

It's clear you don't like the concept of a powersailor, because it compromises sailing capabilities. It also compromises powering capabilities. Other critics may say it's the worst of both worlds. But the fact remains it has the capability of doing both, and there's a market for that, as Gromet points out but alleges to not understand.

 

One way to enjoy them

 

TheFarSide: Whether something, including a sailboat, is properly or poorly designed, depends on how it satisfies its intended purpose(s). Nothing more, nothing less. ... Given the required capabilities and price point of the powersailor, the question is, whether any designer on this forum could do better than MacGregor. ... Other critics may say it's the worst of both worlds.

Another issue that the model in that picture above is the M, whereas most of the BS slung around here is about the X (which would be heeling even more in the same air). The M has a deeper V bottom with a hunk of lead in it, giving it much better righting moment. It's also sturdier. The X seems to me not very well designed, the M certainly better.

Also, there's the question of trying to do more things than are really feasible. Suppose you wanted the Mac to also serve as a land vehicle, or God forbid you wanted to make it fly. A lot of the criticism is based, in my opinion legitimately, on the X and the hype eminating from the manufacturer and the troll. As for whether the M is a serviceable trailer/motorsailor, I won't dispute that (there are plenty of others doing that already ).