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What's your Morgan?

60K views 159 replies 87 participants last post by  Jeff_H 
#1 ·
Seems to me there's alot of OI's out there, but I've not heard of many sloops out there as old as mine. Is that true? I notice BullDog6 asking about old hull numbers for a 34. I'd make it a poll, but I don't think I know all the options.

I'm sailing Morgan 30 Hull #47, 1968, Keel/Centerboard.

So, what's your Morgan?
 
#146 ·
Hey SailNet@! First post, but glad to be here.

I've been sailing my 1970 Charley Morgan 38 for over a year now and I have fallen in love with it. "Contigo" is a strong sailing heavy full keeled boat with racing lines that allow me to take her up to high speeds compared to most any other boat in her class. The cabin has been modified to accompany more space, making this a perfect single or double handed cruiser.

Anyway, I've gathered from sailboat data's website that there were only 75 of these CM-38s made. Is that true? The number on my panel reads M38K007. Does that mean this is the 7th boat made of this series out of 75?

Anyway, I love the boat and cant wait to keep learning more about her!

H
 
#147 ·
...................... The number on my panel reads M38K007. Does that mean this is the 7th boat made of this series out of 75? ......................
'sounds like you would be #7, but check the end cap at the aft of your boom. It was a common practice at Morgan Yachts to stamp the hull production number on this point of the rigging to match the hull. This was not always done, but I'm hull# 172 for my production model and it's stamped on the end of my main and mizzen booms.
 
#149 ·
We just became the proud owners of 1969 30 #199, the centerboard on ours was removed as well. Glad to hear that's not a problem. Wondering if anyone knows how to trace the name history. Racing #2759 if that helps. Recommendations of where and how to find this out would be greatly appreciated.
 
#154 ·
Back in January I purchased a '78 Morgan 27, a formerly well known Seattle racer called Nasty Jack. has the little winner's plaques on the main bulkhead from '78,'79,'80, and '81. Awesome boat, came with 11 bags of sails and a whole bunch of other gear. Needed a lot of cleaning due to a couple years of previous owners health problems, a lot of rusty and corroded electrical connections and components, but she's coming along..pic is the day I brought it home from Tacoma.
 

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#158 ·
The Morgan 45 was one of the last and most extreme production CCA race rule beater design. Because the CCA rule over penalized waterline length, these boats had extremely short waterline lengths for their length on deck. That short waterline resulted in a deep canoe body which in turned compromised motion comfort, performance, ease of handling, carrying capacity, seaworthiness, tracking and interior volume.

The original Morgan 45's were tender, wet, rolly, wildly pitch prone, hard to sail vessels. By any standard compared to 45 footer of almost any other era they were slow and hard to sail. Motion rates were relatively slow, but the wild pitching and rolling was hard on a crew. The originals were deep draft with bolt on lead keels that approached 50% of displacement which helped a little with motion and some with ultimate stability. But first and foremost they were designed as race boats to be sailed with very large and strong crews. Tehy relies on large overlapping headsails in light to moderate winds. Those light to moderate air sails quickly became overpowered requiring early reefs and headsail changes due to the minimal stability of the boat relative to the size of its sail plan. They were prone to broaching and took careful helmsmanship when deep off the wind.

They had the interior volume of a 38 foot cruising boat from that era and maybe a 35 footer of today. The interiors were cramped and not especially comfortable. Motion in the bow made the forward cabin almost unusable on a beat.

They were actually pretty well constructed, but like many race boats of the era were also seen as a little disposable. To explain that comment, subtracting the weight of the ballast, the hull and rig of a Morgan 45 is almost the same as that of a J-44. But the Morgan lacks the quality control, internal framing, coring and other structural components that make the J-44 a much stronger, tougher build quality. The hulls were not cored, but the decks had balsa coring. Instead of coring the hulls were bulked up with comparatively resin rich layups and proportionately large amounts of non-directional fabric which we now know is a recipe for increased fatigue and reduced impact resistance.

The Morgan 45's were obsolete as race boats almost as soon as they hit the water due to the demise of the CCA rule and the start of the IOR rule, as well as, killed by the shift from fin keels with attached rudders (like that on the Morgan 45) to fin keels with skeg or post hung rudders. These were hard boats to steer developing strong weather helms and large helm forces and wandering wildly in any kind of seaway. There is nothing so obsolete as an obsolete race boat, except an extreme rule beater obsolete race boat and the Morgan 45 was the poster child for that. .

Starratt Jenks bought the tooling for the hull and deck and then dumbed the boat down. They reduced the draft, the amount of ballast and the ballast material, and the sail plan. The higher quality control that was exercised in building the racing Morgan 45's, was somewhat lost by the wayside as the Starratt-Jenks were marketed largely as inexpensive kit boats. My mother and step-father seriosly considered buying the kit and building one, but after multiple trips to the factory, opted out in large part because of the perceived poor quality of the design and construction. Without the depth and ballasting of the race boats, heavy weather ability was compromised from an already compromised design. With the smaller rig, light air performance and ease of handling was a compromised as well.

So that's the story on these.

Respectfully,
Jeff
 
#159 ·
Thank you so much, Jeff. I have looked very hard online for build information on the original Morgan 45's & haven't seen much info beyond SailNet. Were you able to find information from Morgan on the build process to find out that it was solid fiber & about the layup process? Would be interested to know how thick. Would you mind clarifying about the bolted on keel--I was pretty sure it was encapsulated? I also wonder if there's any history of one of these early Morgan boats failing--pretty hard to find specific examples since there were only a few built. The sailboat data calculations for comfort ratio & capsize are really solid numbers--much more so than the J-44's--would appreciate insight on that. Thanks again for your perspective, Jeff.

We have sailed in moderately protected ocean waters in heavy older boats with graceful overhangs and love the feeling of heeling. But, I've never been on open ocean waves on a heeling boat and wonder about the safety. Would love to hear from any other sailors that have had experience with an older boat built to heel.
 
#160 · (Edited)
The Morgan 45 does not have a cored hull. But while the hulls were not cored, the decks had balsa coring. Instead of coring, the hulls were bulked up with comparatively resin rich layups and proportionately large amounts of non-directional fabric. Initially that layup starts out weaker than a better proportioned laminate, and over time will weaken quickly compared to a properly constructed cored hull. The way that the Morgan 45's were built, is a recipe for strength reduction due to fatigue and reduced impact resistance over time. This is particularly true of impact resistance, which started much lower than might be expected for the hull thickness and diminishes over time due to fatigue.

As far as the Capsize Screen Formula and the Motion Comfort Index go, they provide absolutely no useful information about the seaworthiness or motion comfort of any boat. As I have explained many times in the past, (and I am about to explain yet again) these surrogate formulas tell almost nothing about how the reality of a boat's likelihood of capsize or its motion comfort. In fact they provide so little indication of a boat's behavior that to rely on them in any way borders on the dangerous.

Both of these formulas were developed at a time when boats were a lot more similar to each other than they are today. These formulas have limited utility in comparing boats other than those which are very similar in weight and buoyancy distribution to each other. Based on the science that has evolved over the 40 plus yeas since tehy were written, neither formula contains almost any of the real factors that maritime science now knows controls motion comfort, the likelihood of capsize, or seaworthiness. Neither formula contains such factors as the vertical center of gravity or buoyancy, neither contains weight or buoyancy distribution (of the hull both below and above the waterline), the extent to which the beam of the boat is carried fore and aft, and neither contains any data on the characteristics that impact damping, all of which collectively are the major factors that really do control motion comfort or the likelihood of capsize.

I typically give this example to explain just how useless and dangerously misleading these formulas can be. If we had two boats that were virtually identical except that one had a 500 pound weight at the top of the mast. (Yes, I know that no one would install a 500 lb weight at the top of the mast.) The boat with the weight up its mast would appear to be less prone to capsize under the capsize screen formula, and would appear to be more comfortable under the Motion Comfort ratio. Nothing would be further than the truth.

And while this example would clearly appear to be so extreme as to be worthy of dismissal, in reality, if you had two boats, normal and the other one with a very heavy interior, shoal draft, its beam carried towards the ends of the boat near the deck line, a heavy deck and cabin, perhaps with traditional teak decks and bulwarks, a very heavy rig, heavy deck hardware, a hard bottomed dingy stored on its cabin top, and the resultant comparatively small ballast ratio made up of low density ballast and compare that to a boat that is lighter overall, but it has a deep draft keel, with a higher ballast ratio, the bulk of the ballast carried in a bulb, its maximum beam carried to a single point in the deck so that there was less deck area near the maximum beam, a lighter weight hull, deck and interior as well as a lighter, but taller rig, it would be easy to see that the second boat would potentially have less of a likelihood of being capsized, and it is likely that the second boat would roll and pitch through a smaller angle, and would probably have better dampening and so roll and pitch at a similar rate to the heavier boat, in other words offer a better motion comfort....And yet, under the Capsize Screen Formula and the Motion Comfort Index it would appear that the first boat would be less prone to capsize and have a better motion when obviously this would not be the case.

There are some better indicators of a vessel's likelihood of capsize. The EU developed their own stability index called STIX, a series of formulas which considered a wide range of factors and provides a reasonable sense of how a boat might perform in extreme conditions. Unfortunately meaningful results require a lot more information than most folks have access to for any specific design. The Offshore Committee of US Sailing developed the following simplified formula for estimating the Angle of Vanishing Stability (Sometimes referred to as the 'AVS', 'limit of positive stability', 'LPS', or 'Latent Stability Angle' ):

Screening Stability Value ( SSV ) = ( Beam 2 ) / ( BR * HD * DV 1/3 )
Where;
BR: Ballast Ratio ( Keel Weight / Total Weight )
HD: Hull Draft
DV: The Displacement Volume in cubic meters. DV is entered as pounds of displacement on the webpage and converted to cubic meters by the formula:
Displacement Volume in Cubic Meters = ( Weight in Pounds / 64 )*0.0283168
The Beam and Hull Draft in this formula are in meters. These values are entered in feet on the webpage and are converted to meters before SSV calculation.
Angle of Vanishing Stability approximately equals 110 + ( 400 / (SSV-10) )


It should be noted that the AVS is only one indicator in evaluating the likelihood of capsize, meaning it only predicts the point at which the vessel wants to turn turtle. It does not predict the amount of force that would be required to heel the vessel to that limit, nor does it predict how the shape of the boat might encourage wave action to roll the boat closer to the angle at which it no longer wants to return. The short waterline and narrow beam suggests a boat that is more likely to be rolled, albeit potentially stay upside down for a shorter time.

But in any event, the hull form and hull and rig proportions would make the Morgan 45 a very poor choice for ocean passage making. The tendency to roll and pitch through large angles and heel excessively, develop high helm loads and need more frequent reefs and sail changes would be very hard on a crew as compared with a more modern design such as the J-44.

Jeff
 
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