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

You can understand how Frankie got this wrong though. I mean, it is in the ocean with swells and large sea creatures and all, and on a hazy day you can be out of sight of land for a large portion of the trip... pretty scary if you don't know wtf you are doing. Not to mention all the pleasure, commercial, and military shipping traffic you've got to watch for and dodge around!

 

Look blame Roger Macgregor for building OCEAN sailboats and nothing other. The facts of life are that global circumnavigators report having the most trouble off the coast of California. It is notorious. Granted, things are getting calmer past Santa Barbara going south. Ocean swells are no big deal in a small sail boat. It is boats that are larger that have trouble with them.

 

Put down the crack pipe Frankie. Idiot.

 

I am burning rubber and laughing gas - just like starshipone. Doesn't mean I am wrong. This is breakthrough technology we are chatting about. That it could appear simplistic, even idiotic, is the halmark of sound engineering.

Hey I am having way to much fun. Kewl it please! ROTFLMAO.

 

What success? It is out of production!

What failure? Almost everybody agrees that the TP52s are the most exiting thing that has happened in sailboat racing during the last couple of years. Almost all of the rock stars of sailing have raced them and loved it. Even Russell Coutts plans to sail on one this year!

 

Yes of course - why didn't I see this before! They wanted to recognize Roger MacGregor for the Mac26x, so they presented him with an award for the Mac25. That makes sense!

 

And those who might be just a little afraid of the Southern Ocean are just whining kids who know nothing!

 

Frank, I ask you again: Who "knows" about this?

 

Perhaps they wouldn't be scared if they were sailing a Mac26x... In any case, regardless of your boat~ Cape Horn has nothing on Point Conception and the DEADLY COAST OF CALIFORNIA!!!

 

No, they'd be too stupid to be scared!

 

Søren Flening

I don't understand your question? Sorry. Who could be those who have read my stuff. Let me give you this to chomp on. Consider it halfed baked but please consider it.

A former Alaska Airline aircraft maintenance engineer and Mac26x owner has been helping me with this. He has been doing work on Mac26x vessels so they will support larger outboards. Folks want that for reasons I can not understand. Let me start with how MacGregor Yachts taught us to think of stability as it relates to the Mac26x.

The notion presented is of one of those punching toys. You know the clowns that you punch and they right themselves. That is how we are to think of stability on the Mac26x. I do not own such a toy but I do have a beach ball and I have run this experiment in the hot tub. If I tape a weight, even a small one, to the bottom, and turn the ball upside down it will always right itself - even with the jets of the hot tub turned full up.

So the report that the Mac26x righted herself in a test pool when plunked upside down doesn't surprise me. But this notion is met with disbelief by those trained by US Sailing. The centerboard even retracted is not going to change the result. This has to do with the shape of the cabin top. It isn't flat enough to provide inverted stability. As long as the boat has the weight of the ballast tank structure and yes even motor where it is she is going to right her self even without water ballast. Unlike lesser designs, the Mac26x has not one but two compression poles. So having the deck salon ripped off by sea action doesn't appear to be a possibility.

So how does the idiotic training of MacGregor Yachts compare to the confused consensus of naval architects and sailboat designers?

Here we are to recognize that torque called the righting moment (RM) is related to the boat's displacement. This is definitional. The displacement multiplied by the horizontal distance between the Center of Gravity (CG) and the center of buoyancy (CB) is the definition of righting moment. That horizontal distance is called the righting arm (CZ).

With that recognition, we are to see that the more displacement the greater the righting moment. Then we must accept the notion that a boat's heeling angle can be pulled past 90 degrees.

Eventually as the boat is pushed past 90 degrees, the CG and CB will come into vertical alignment as they are when the boat is at rest right side up. This is the point where the righting moment is zero and it is called the Limit of Positive Stability (LPS).

Now comes the assumption: Everyone assumes that once the LPS is reached the boat will invert and stay that way until wind or wave action push it right way up. But this isn't true with the most seaworthy of shapes, those being the sphere and the log. It is only true with shapes that have until recently been sailboat shapes. The shape of the top deck of the Mac26x and Mac26m makes that assumption incorrect.

It is similar to when 2 + 2 no longer equals 4 because we are no longer working in base 10.

All those nice curves showing the angle in degrees against the righting arm suddenly lose their predictive value. We can no longer predict just from math when a sailboat will invert and stay that way or even that it ever will.

It takes 120 lbs at the top of the jib to hold a Mac26x on its side with the mast parallel to the water. Unballasted with sails up, it does not appear that the Mac26x can turn turtle. When plopped upside down with no sails she rights herself. Completely filled with water she rights her self and can even be sailed (though not fast).

Of course there is still capsize risk. In sufficient sea, all boats can capsize. Nonetheless, this vessel, when capsized floats and the hatches are positioned that except by wave and wake action they can be left open without water entering the interior. That would be operator error however. I really want to see the Teeters video now. The conclusion I come to is that you can get stability (the ability to stay right side up) by adding displacement to a traditional looking sailboat, or you can get stability with additional flotation (buoyancy) on a boat shaped like a Mac26x or m. CG or CB this is the question. With CB you get the benefit of boats that when swamped may not sink as well as a faster sailboat when there is light wind.

 

That's how I think of you, but I'd hardly call you stable.

 

Cape Scott has had the largest waves recorded and I have rounded Cape Scott in my Mac26x. Several other Mac26x cruisers did so earlier and even Mac26 Classics have done so. This is all about waiting out the gales and storms and rounding with the knowledge that modern reporting provides. The relevant knowledge including current and slack water times as well as high water and weather and season. Even a battle ship will change course when the going gets deadly.

 

But you love me anyway right :?: Blame Roger Macgregor

"A ballasted sailboat is very much like the inflatable toy with a weight in the bottom that kids use as punching bags. The weight makes the toy return to vertical after it is poked."

Roger MacGregor didn't allow himself to become part of the group grope consensus building mentality currently characterizing naval architects and boat designers in the US today. He has an army of sailors now trained to think correctly rather than by concensus. These are running the PHRF and major races now explaining why you have things like IRC and movable ballast taking hold. Soon the buoy race courses will be returned to Olympic style. Just a few more years. We don't want to push to fast. It is great to sail in modern times.