MacGregor 26 not good? Water-ballast in general??

Trailerable cabin boat: The Controversy series built by MDI boat yard, in the early fifties. There's one on the roadside a few miles from here, an Amphibicon. You could ramp-launch the smaller boats (Esp. the Amphibiette @ 24 ft, #2400 lbs). Many were sold, and quite a few still sail.

 

At the end of the day, MacGregor has built a boat for a particular niche. If you fit that niche as RWatson clearly does - its the boat for you. And if that gets you sailing? Tan efffing Fastic

But lets not pretend that the boat is something it isn't or that MacGregor is some sort of breakthrough naval architect

 

Excellent work - I now have a comprehensive list of examples.

I started this research in the thread

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/any-info-macgregors-stanford-mba-project-48977.html

and didnt locate much info myself.

I will have a great deal of pleasure contacting the Mac 26 website, with the info in these posts.

 

Yes we can. It is a trap replying to multiple answers at the same time. I hope you can accept my apology.

( BB "because they weren't 'innovated by Roger MacGregor' " comment )

The biggest problem with the net is that most (of my) replies get dashed off in seconds, without re-reading for context.

As a result, they often give unintended results. I have my email set to not Send instantly - so I get a final chance to correct bad text efforts. SMS has a similar trap.

check out http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/ to bring the smile back to your face.

 

Hilarious! Thanks RW.

 

Holy smokes what a thread. To get back to the point....

First sailboat I had was a Venture 222 - (a 1972 Macgregor), owned in the early 90s. lower middle class conventional (non water ballasted) trailer sailer. Ended up running the Macgregor owners group for awhile, at roughly the time Macgregor launched the first water ballasted M26s. BTW, this all predates the power sailer, which I really don't like.

Sailed with many owners on the great lakes, across lake Ontario several times, in Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. Several owners took their boats to the Florida keys, etc... We sailed in some rough weather (worst - crossed lake ontario on a day with 3m/9ft waves, 30kts and squalls, two other shorter but rougher passages on Lake Ontario Georgian bay) had some extended cruises several weeks.

This was all IDENTICAL usage to any Hinckley. Oyster, nauticat, C&C, papyrus raft etc.... in the area, except their beer was usually colder and our trailering gave us the ability to cruise in different areas rather than mostly daysailing in an out of the same home port. (if that) The tradeoff of course was space and comfort. So, from a utility point of view, those boats were no different than any other trailerable.

IMO What Macgregor did differently is that he designed those boats with user friendliness first, meaning cost, weight/ease of trailering and launch and retrieval. (example - look how low any Macgregor sits on its factory trailer, also, I could raise the mast and rig the V222 by myself. I learned to appreciate both and got a lot more use as a result.)
We all sailed a lot, and had a great time.

The water ballast was an extension of that thinking, because at the time cars were gutless, SUVs were for rednecks - why load the trailer with 700lbs of iron? There was no other way to get a boat of that capacity and size easily on and off a trailer and rigged. The 26 had nearly the double the volume of my 22, and on the trailer probably weighed the same or less. 2500lbs at a guess with junk aboard.

This meant that you did not need to purchase a truck to purchase a boat, and it opened up a market for Roger, and for sailing. The water ballasted boats worked pretty well, the owners liked them for what they were, though most considered them "kits". The M26 (pure sailboat, not the power sailer) sailed pretty well in light air, and would run away from other boats of a similar size. Once the breeze blew, their lack of ballast stability came into play, but they were really not materially worse or less enjoyable than the dozens of other more conventional small boats of the day. (the builders of which are now long gone....)

None of the boats I encountered were of great quality, but Macgregor was not alone in this. The "Macgregor" boats were more "tooled" and had more cost reduction science applied than the older "venture" boats, so they were definitely flimsier, at times disconcertingly so, I remember the molded interiors creaking and crackling when sat on or pushed. (same is true of C&C but the comparison ends there...)

As indicated somewhere back in the thread most did graduate to larger, more substantial sailboats, but they had a great time getting there. Lets not compare a tent to a house. Would rather hike carrying a tent, and had plenty of fun doing that too, but I live in a house.

So anyway, they aren't the only "entry level" boat and while its fun to "pile on", ya gotta give the guy credit for an open mind, designing around perceived customer need rather than conventional wisdom. For the priorities of the intended customer, water ballast was a winner.

Dave

 

Good, well balanced summary there Dave.

I smiled at the " the molded interiors creaking and crackling when sat on or pushed", when you consider the stated aim of " user friendliness first, meaning cost, weight"

Fibreglass panels for an interior should always bend a little, if they are optimal weights.

One of my engineering hero's is Buckminster Fuller, who was a fan of 'ephemeralisation'. This is where technology allows us to do the same job with fewer materials.

The Macgregor is a good case for this - light as some large day sailers, but the hulls seem to have great longevity - unless you encounter a fast steel yacht

 

Tx. Always admired Bucky but had to look up "ephemeralisation" - cool! Below does not recognize the "upper bound" of the law of diminishing returns though. BUT.....he did unwittingly (?) predict "virtual" activities.

Wikipedia says:

Ephemeralization, a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, is the ability of technological advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing". Fuller's vision was that ephemeralization will result in ever-increasing standards of living for an ever-growing population despite finite resources. The concept has been embraced by those who argue against Malthusian philosophy.

Fuller uses Henry Ford's assembly line as an example of how ephemeralization can continuously lead to better products at lower cost with no upper bound on productivity. Fuller saw ephemeralization as an inevitable trend in human development. The progression was from "compression" to "tension" to "visual" to "abstract electrical" (i.e., nonsensorial radiation, such as radio waves, x rays, etc.).[citation needed]



So:

2015 Macgregor M70 power sailer/VTOL/space shuttle, - legally trailerable! Available on Xbox, Wii and Playstation! Download direct for $99.99."



Fun stuff.

Dave

 

What Ford did was create overproduction. To solve the overproduction problem and keep the line running, advertising was invented. Then later debt was encouraged. Did anyone really need a car? A production line is not sustainable. Macgregor produced 5000 Mac26x vessels in 7 years with no advertising at a price that did not require debt. This will never be duplicated. It is an incredible business story that may be important for the future. How many University students own cars? Thanks for the definition.

 

coming from a country that sold pet rocks and mating sand...

 

I agree that Macgregor is really an amazing business story. Am a corporate dude, so (sadly) I do often see the world through that lens.

What Ford invented was not overproduction per se but a capital intensive system that was only truly efficient when operating at capacity and fully absorbing its overhead. (This is what the current fad of "Lean" seeks to address...) The (capacity utilization) beast MUST be (optimized) fed. "Overproduction" was an unintended consequence. Agriculture has over and underproduced depending on the weather (and technology)... forever. Not a new invention. Rabbits and cats do it all the time. ;-) They no doubt "advertise" in their way as well...

To bring this back to boats - in a roundabout way, the preceding paragraph can apply to the entire industry. The boating industry boom of the 70s and 80s sowed its own destruction though the creation of massive overcapacity. The boat market is always cyclical and difficult to manage anyway, and the post-boom glut of used boats was an unintended consequence that took a major share of the (highly cyclical) new boat market, reducing the need for that capacity. (Bye Bye Boatbuilders!)

At least wood boats rotted, and didn't compete with new boats!

The fact that Roger navigated this successfully for so long is remarkable, though his boats may not be.

Dave

PS - what is "mating sand"? Sounds like a really bad idea....

 

I think lean more about constant change with continuous improvement rather than a Production Line. But there is a lot going on. Wood production is sustainable where petrol based is not. Boeing has applied Lean but it's line of business is still not sustainable. Lean means you do not produce until someone is willing to pay and those days are about over for power yachts. They are about over for air travel as well. I mentioned college students because most can not purchase education and a car. When graduating there are no jobs and they are in debt. That means limited air travel. This is the future overall in the US and hence it is the future of yacht design. What students are being taught is that economies in US and world wide were petrol driven. Economic growth is over now that oil is over 100 US. Boat design and build needs to be like it was Pre fiberglass. See this and see the future of yacht design. It will be custom builds with a lot of the work done by the purchaser. Yes likely in wood.

 

Lean - I think we're talking about the same thing. Many many moving parts in this, not just oil. Indeed we live in "interesting times". Way OT I think, ....

Back to boats,

Now that you get me thinking about it, you are - in a way - suggesting the "hundred mile yacht". This is how it used to be. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

It might be that yachtbuilders of today are, for now, mainly the shops restoring/repurposing older craft - with lots of work by the purchaser. That's the most available and least expensive resource. Most marinas look like a parking lot in Havana. Now there's a comparison! ;-)

Dave

 

I am not familiar with 100 mile yachts. Stuff happens any place on the ocean and hence the yacht must be built to handle all passages including ocean crossing. Concentrating on boats, In 1973 there were 46 boat builders in Costa Mesa California and 24,000 boats were produced. A year later that number shrank to 22. Today there are less than a handful. Nonetheless Costa Mesa California remains a Mecca for boat owners, a sacred historical place to any who ever owned or dreamed of owning an ocean going sailboat. Westsail, Islander, Flicka, Crealock, Dana, Columbia & Lancer, Cal 20 and Cal 40 and Erickson all have historical ties to the city. And if you consider collaborative efforts, the list is even larger.

Costa Mesa is in Orange County and there were close to 100 boat builders in Orange County in the mid 1970s. Hence those who have or had interest in Santana, Shocks, I-14s, Sabots and Thistles, Penguins, el Toros and Lidos, which were all produced in the county, should be interested in Costa Mesa.

Designs from Bill Lee, George Cuthbertson & George Cassian, Bruce Farr, C. William Lapworth, and Shad Turner were built in the Costa Mesa community. Today, builders such as Dick Valdes and Maury Threien, who founded Columbia Yachts, have long gone and the Mecca today is threatened by redevelopment. Only Westerly Marine, Jenson Marine and MacGregor Yachts remain.

What made MacGregor's Mac26x sailboats of the highest quality undoubtedly had to do with the skilled work force at other manufacturers whose production lines were shutting down. That work force became Roger MacGregor's work force. Now that the workers are in Florida and the Carolina's, Costa Mesa builds are rare. I think Lean applies. When the work force is skilled, quality improvements are natural if you empower those so skilled to try new things. That is what Lean is suppose to do. I think.

The idea of using 30 year old fiberglass hulls, gutting them and designing a new boat seems feasible. Stretch versons make the most sense. This is because a displacement sail boat under 37 foot can not take advantage of modern weather reporting. I know there are a handful of Catalina 30s that have been so stretched. Planing designs can be small like Mac26x boats. Sea kindliness is provided by water ballast in these smaller sail boats.

 

100 mile -

Was drawing a parallel to this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100-Mile_Diet


Also, not gutting and stretching old boats but merely restoring, updating and repurposing. This too competes with new, today, in a major way vs the available boat market. While it does not use renewable resources, it uses what would otherwise be "waste". Like warehouse/loft apartments vs new condos.