Replacing Permanent Ballast in 26M

[Signaleer]

Simplest thing is to rectify your original mistake and trade the M in on a good X. Then you can add batteries everywhere you want....

HUmmmmmmm your telling me there is 13 inches between the hull and the top of the sole liner in the middle of the X boat or .....???

I have batteries in the center of the hull, under aft dinette seat. Could fit more there and under the forward seat at the center line for sure. The M must be comparable.

[Crikey]

This comes back to the weighted keel (in the case of an :Daggerboard) argument.
For easing sailing tenderness in a MacGregor filling the DB with lead shot and resin will give the greatest return. Assuming at the same time, the sand reinforced (ballasted) slot would take the full impact of a grounding. Which it probably could.....
Either way a modified or standard daggerboard would still come off poorly even if the hull wasn't affected. When talking ballast, the lower down it is, the more beneficial it is. Carrying some 300 lbs of extra weight is a varience in loading that most of us would experience every time we went sailing, and whether it consists of batteries, food, water or weighted keel it will always be a stability improvement if kept below the center of boyancy, which is fairly high up.
Trailering, launching or retreval is not going to be noticeably changed by the additional batteries, though I would not be inclined to mess with the ballast tank to install them.
That leaves the issue of controllably raising a much heavier keel.

[sailboatmike]

That leaves the issue of controllably raising a much heavier keel.

Thats really not an issue, the greater majority of trailer sailors have weighted keels and a simple winch mechanism to left it and lower it controllably.

[Highlander]

On a beach sand poured into the D/B to try it out & if u like it u can always just leave it in there u,d have to plug the bottom drain holes first & if u liked it leave it if u liked it but wanted more weight just add resin to the sand or find a weighted bolt on bulb off a smaller old keel boat & bolt it onto the D/B which then might require more strengthening , now I do not know how much an issue a protruding bulb weighing approx. #50 would be when running WOT

J

[BOAT]

Would lead shot be more weight than the sand? I think some have tried this and I am amazed that no one has commented on the results. I think BWY even built a special M boat with a weighted keel and I have not heard any great reports from them on the experiment. I wonder why?

[Wayne nicol]

i followed some threads on here where some folk put shot and resin in the daggerboard- they reported no noticeable difference in heel angle- i seem to remember them saying that the recovery was a bit quuicker- but that not enough weight could be added to really make a significant difference.

[Crikey]

I don't think any weighted keel system would vary that much if thè mass was not altered sufficiently to noticiably exceed its initial presence. The Mac has basically none,, other than what is built into the hull as a resin sand mass and/or water ballast weight. What a weighted daggerboard would do is reduce the speed at which the hull would want to heel over. The overall angle is a product of the sail area and the hull resistance against altering its own center of gravity. Increasing the mass of the keel is an improvement in that, but not the final say.
It's important to remember our Macs have to live both in the planing world, and the sailing, and the deployment of one sides enhancement should not affect the other to any bothersome degree, if at all. To enter the roll resistance realm of a fixed keel 'marina queen' you'd need a lot more than a couple of hund4ed pounds of lead in your breeches (daggerboard)!

[BOAT]

I don't think any weighted keel system would vary that much if thè mass was not altered sufficiently to noticiably exceed its initial presence. The Mac has basically none,, other than what is built into the hull as a resin sand mass and/or water ballast weight. What a weighted daggerboard would do is reduce the speed at which the hull would want to heel over. The overall angle is a product of the sail area and the hull resistance against altering its own center of gravity. Increasing the mass of the keel is an improvement in that, but not the final say.
It's important to remember our Macs have to live both in the planing world, and the sailing, and the deployment of one sides enhancement should not affect the other to any bothersome degree, if at all. To enter the roll resistance realm of a fixed keel 'marina queen' you'd need a lot more than a couple of hund4ed pounds of lead in your breeches (daggerboard)!

Yeah, that makes sense.

I think what he is saying is that you still need a pretty steep angle to get 50 pounds of shot to actually start to push back. It's like having a hammer in your hand and holding it down low at your side. It's easy to hold the hammer a foot or two away from your body with the arm straight, but it gets a lot harder to hold the hammer out away from your body way up in the air. The point where the weight actually does anything is out so far that it's too late to help - your already heeling too far.

It would take a really really heavy thousand pound weight to do anything at 5 or 10 degrees. With a 50 to 100 pound weight it's still not going to do anything until it gets to 30 degrees anyways.

[Crikey]

Good re-hash BOAT.

[NiceAft]

Good

The two sixty pound (27.2155 Kg) AGM batteries in my 's battery compartment neither hinder nor enhance the boats performance. She sails the same. Adding the muscle head main was what affected the heeling. All of the extra cloth above makes her tender.

Ray

[sailboatmike]

Good

The two sixty pound (27.2155 Kg) AGM batteries in my 's battery compartment neither hinder nor enhance the boats performance. She sails the same. Adding the muscle head main was what affected the heeling. All of the extra cloth above makes her tender.

Ray

There is a opposite technique for sailing with square head mains which differs from the traditional main, one needs to use the vang (or kicker if your from Europe) to allow the leech atop of the sail to twist and depower in stronger winds, loosening the vang depowers the top part of the sail bringing it on powers her up, the vang has a much greater effect as its controlling more sail area, also use of the outhaul, the use of the outhaul may also allow some twist in the leech

[BOAT]

Yes, I have read comments here about muscle head mains. Everyone who has one does not seem to rave about any extra performance. I assume it's not really a good idea for the MAC since the rig is already too tall.

As my sail gets older I am forced to consider adding a vang - I have caught myself pulling on the end of the boom every now and then to check the luff - that's an old habit from sailing dinghies as a kid.

I guess it's time for a vang.

[sailboatmike]

Part of the theory is that the square top helps diminish the tip vortices that are developed by a traditional pin head main, much like the winglets at the end of the newer aircraft wings, it stops the air wrapping around the trailing edge, without those winglets the ends of aircraft wings actually do nothing to promote lift. From reading the PHD paper from Damien Lafforgue ( http://www.finot.com/ecrits/Damien%20La ... glish.html ) it seems that high aspect ratio rigs (taller mast and shorter boom) are far more effective than low aspect ratio rigs, low aspect ratio rigs produce greater drag for a given sail aea

Watched an interesting video on the design of the A380 Airbus, without the winglets the wings would have to be meters longer to create the required lift and therefore could not be landed at the greater majority of airports

Yes Im a sorry little man, who spends way too much time reading and researching

[Crikey]

The key in a MacGregor would be to increase the lift of the sail in the bottom half. Flying jibs?

[Phil M]

Yes, I have read comments here about muscle head mains. Everyone who has one does not seem to rave about any extra performance. I assume it's not really a good idea for the MAC since the rig is already too tall.

As my sail gets older I am forced to consider adding a vang - I have caught myself pulling on the end of the boom every now and then to check the luff - that's an old habit from sailing dinghies as a kid.

I guess it's time for a vang.

I quit using a vang a few years ago. I'm not sure the vang accomplishes very much, so it's one less thing to adjust.