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Interesting
I found it interesting that two of the people who replied advised the author to look at Catalina and Hunter 25's implying that their construction is superior to MacGregors. The Catalina wing keel carries over 1300 pounds of lead ballast which kind of compromises it as a trailer sailer. Unloaded the entire package weighs over 5000 pounds which would indicate a big block 3/4 ton pulling vehicle. Of course, that's not the case with their water ballasted models. Also, both the Hunter and the Catalina have sandwiched composite construction. The Hunter has a foam core hull while the Catalina has a plywood core deck with a balsa cabin top. I once looked at an older Colombia with a balsa core deck and cabin top. The deck had leaked around all the bolt holes and the cabin top around the hatches, swelling the balsa and causing a spiderweb of deep cracks on the ceiling of the cabin interior from front to back. The boat was unsalable. In contrast, the MacGregor is completely constructed of layers of hand laid fiberglass the way they used to do it. More layers of fiberglass are laid where the through deck bolts go. The decks are bolted to the hull, not screwed or riveted as with many of the competitors boats. Most of the production boat hulls today are constructed of short fiberglass fibers blown in a heavy mixture of resin. The end result is inferior strength and continuity. As many or more boats are damaged or sunk from running into underwater objects or being grounded as from capsizing, especially where I live. I once owned a Catalina 22 with a swing keel which I sailed off the Southern California coast. A slight hull shudder in light wind developed and I had the 22 pulled from the water. The entire keel was encircled by a crack, an expensive repair that I didn't trust. I sold the boat. For the few years I owned it the 22 had never been trailered nor had it been grounded or collided with anything. I have no idea if this was a common problem or not.
Everything with sailboats is a compromise with cruisers compromising speed for comfort and faster boats vice versa. I own a Morgan 33 O.I that we sailed 400 miles up the west coast from San Francisco to Coos Bay, Oregon. The boat is built like a tank and carries 5000 lbs lead ballast. We encountered 40 plus knot winds and twenty foot seas off Cape Blanco and the Rogue River reef which is known as a graveyard. To whoever it was that praised the Northwest coast as a sailing paradise I would inform him that the Northwest is a big place. Ninety mile an hour wind is not uncommon off Cape Blanco with occasional combined seas of more than 40 feet. On the three good sailing days a year there are still 10,000 crab pots with tether lines to snake around your prop. There are few good anchorages and no near islands. The Morgan is up for sale. As much as I love her she hasn't been out of the slip for over two years. The drive to the coast is 250 miles and with the price of gas we don't visit her very often. We have a 40 mile long lake near our house and several inviting mountain lakes nearby. My wife and I have decided we want to sail or swing on the hook in a secluded cove for a night or three. In the winter we can trailer to The San Juans or Channel Islands or even Lake Havasu or Lake Mead. The opportunities are almost endless except for blue water sailing of which there is precious little of off our coast, especially for two retired people. So, we sacrifice a little performance. We don't give a rats....We will be sailing on sun filled days or swinging in tranquility with margarita filled hands while 99.9 % of the sail boats in Charleston Marina (Coos Bay) will be in their slips. Two other things; Yacht owners, racers and magazine editors in particular can be and often are an insufferable bunch of snobs. (The "p" word comes to mind!) The bigger, faster and more expensive the yacht the more insufferable they often are. The last comment; A sailboat with a flat bottomed hull and a 50 horse engine in my view is a bad compromise. You have a slow motor boat with a mast affixed to it's deck. My advice is to buy a fast motor cruiser or a sail boat or one of each. None of you really touched on the older more conventional snail sail water ballasted MacGregor 26's with dagger boards or swing keels. It's a shame they quit making them. I am going to look at one this weekend.
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