MacGregorSailors.com

I totally agree with that point - there would be no way for someone to separate me from my MAC without putting up an awful lot of money because it's something I could never replace. There just really is no other boat that can do what it does.

I would think is any sail boat has a chance of surviving it would be the power sailor.

It can have the speed to pull people along on water toys and yet still sail when the mood takes you.

The boating industry is its own worst enemy, everything for a boat costs 2 or 3 times what a somewhat comparable land based unit costs and often the technology is less than those used in the land based units.

This is probably due to the strangle hold companies such as Raymarine have on the market, a couple of typical examples are chart plotters, VHF radios wind instruments and the list goes on.

Now my $200Au ($150us) mobile phone can do the job of most of these instruments and has faster better technologies, a weather station with wind instruments can be bought for less than $100 with wireless senders etc, yet a boat wind instrument is well over $1000

The marine industry in killing itself with its own greed

For me, Im not even middle class, we earn well below the average house hold income, no big house, no flash new cars, we just chose to spend what little we have over at the end of the week on our healthy hobby / sport, that gives us many hours of enjoyment and we get to mix with in general awesome people who have the same passion as we do, what price can you put on that?

Economically, I don't know what I am. While I agree with most of what has been said here, I think the value of a trailerable sailboat is still valid. Here in the UK, prices have risen about 20% this year.

A bit of an update. I sent L. Sharp an e-mail to ask when production would continue. She said she could not say, but did not say that it would not resume.

I asked about buying the prototype and she said it was not ready for sale.

I think there is still a market for such a boat, and they might even be able to export it.

miamistyle wrote:
I asked about buying the prototype and she said it was not ready for sale.

I'm the farthest thing from a boatbuilder, but reading this thread makes me wonder if something went wrong with the prototype. Someone suggested it before and it might be right: what happens when you spend a bunch of money and unintentionally create something with an inherent fault, like a structural issue or a built-in instability. If you had a big healthy company you could write it off as R&D and start a new prototype, but if you have no other production to support the new model, I could imagine that could eat up a lot of capital and make one wary of sending good money after bad.

Maybe the 22 prototype just sucked, and they called it quits?

I'm still sort of in the dark on the "epoxy boat" thing. In fact - I have yet to see a MacGregor 70 yet in a finished epoxy format. I don't know if people don't want an epoxy boat or what the deal is but it seems like all of a sudden all the air has come out of the epoxy boat balloon - NO ONE talks about it any more and I can't find a single production boat out there made out of epoxy over 20 feet. What's up with that?? Is there something about epoxy that we did not know about?

Can anyone find me an all epoxy production boat on the water right now? I can't find anything that is a production boat larger than 20 feet. Lot's of Vinyl and lots of other stuff, but no epoxy. Lot's of custom boats and lots of racers but NO production boats.

What's up with that??

Is that the problem? Was the Epoxy solution a bad idea? Is epoxy a really bad material for factory production?

I feel its a cost based thing, epoxy is way more expensive the polyvinyl, I would think best part of at least 1/3 more

They must be doing this out of a love of boat building. Because an updated 26M with a few user optional upgrades would have been good business. There are a few tweaks that could be made to the M to increase its sailing qualities if they werent happy with it. A day sailing version with an extra large cockpit and a small cuddy with usable head plus a nice big bunk under the cockpit for overnighting would be a good option too.
Do a computer workup of those skegs to verify that me and that other guy aren't just imagining things.
Make the daggerboard a few inches wider. Use the good gelcoat so the finish lasts. For the cost of developing a new boat they could have done all that and had something people would love.
Ix

Ix - great point! I can't imagine that a 4 ft shorter boat would be that much easier to handle. Tweaking the 26 (or not) would seem to be a good option. There is PLENTY of feedback from customers (and vitriol from haters) regarding a wish list of revisions. Seems like improving on a successful design would be a no-brainer.

But I'm an engineer - not an entrepreneur....

Ixneigh wrote:A day sailing version with an extra large cockpit and a small cuddy with usable head plus a nice big bunk under the cockpit for overnighting would be a good option too.

I've been dreaming about a Mac version of this for a while, just for s&g's, not that I'm wanting one.

Been following this guy for a while - Lackey Sailing. On his Windsong project, he transforms a 1960 Pearson Triton into a daysailer. Nice work!

I think those who said the 26 is a better size are wrong.

Catalina has been making a 22 footer for how many decades now?

I have owned and sailed a and a 26s. For me, a 22 would be the sweet spot. If ever gets built, I will buy one and send you pictures from all of the places I will take it.

miamistyle wrote:I think those who said the 26 is a better size are wrong.

Catalina has been making a 22 footer for how many decades now?

I have owned and sailed a and a 26s. For me, a 22 would be the sweet spot. If ever gets built, I will buy one and send you pictures from all of the places I will take it.

I agree with this post 100% - I know us old guys who are in the better half of our careers and have more time, bigger driveways and are too stiff to bend over to take a ____ and like to make 3 mile commutes in our 6 ton freeway sleds - we are all about the comfort of a 30 foot boat - but the reality - the FACTS on the ground are that we are a dwindling market - WE are dying off - any company marketing to the physical abilities of a aging market like us is going to go out of business if they expect us to get more robust and add even MORE weight to the trailer hitch - just the opposite - a bigger boat will be impossible for us to even sail at an advanced age - and raising the mast?

As Highlander likes to point out - "the older you get the harder it is to raise your mast"

Sorry for the truth guys, but that's what I do - I tell you the truth.
Young people want smaller cars and smaller SUV's and big tires and off road jeeps and they want to tow a smaller package. The young people don't have all the real estate to store a huge barge in the driveway like we do. They live in condos downtown.

Normal sailboats are expensive - they need a slip - and only people of affluence can justify such a thing. That's great, and no disrespect for the Polo Shirt crowd, but they are a small number - marketing to them requires the refinements they feel they deserve and a high price due to low volume sales - they are not going for TRAILER sailboats - the people I know in that class hate everything that has the word TRAILER in it. They use the word TRAILER as a derogatory term to define US, the lower classes. Old OR young people with money are NOT going to by TRAILER sailboats.

miamestyle is right and if he lives in Miami he probably has a better view of the real demographics of the United States better than most of us do because of what he can see right in his own town.

Im not so sure Boat.

The aspirational baby boomers made the trailer boat market way back in the 70's, my generation followed on, then we lost a generation to Facebook, people too busy taking pictures of what they are having for tea to do anything of real substance.

The point is the next generation of boat owners want bells and whistles, and bells and whistles just dont fit into 22 feet, we looked at a Catalina 22 which sold over here as a Boomeroo 22, while it was nice and well thought out it was still very much like camping on water with a tiny cramped and hard to get into Vee birth and no headroom to speak of.

IMHO 25 feet is the optimum size to get all the features you want and yet still be small enough to tow and handle reasonably easily on the water

Both the yacht clubs I belong too have predominantly trailer boat owners as members, and while I know of other clubs that think of trailer boats much the same as trailer trash they are by far in the minority, but they are welcome to their 50 footers which just rot away in their slip in the months or years between being used, just so they can brag they own a REAL yacht

sailboatmike wrote:Im not so sure Boat.

The aspirational baby boomers made the trailer boat market way back in the 70's, my generation followed on, then we lost a generation to Facebook, people too busy taking pictures of what they are having for tea to do anything of real substance.

The point is the next generation of boat owners want bells and whistles, and bells and whistles just dont fit into 22 feet, we looked at a Catalina 22 which sold over here as a Boomeroo 22, while it was nice and well thought out it was still very much like camping on water with a tiny cramped and hard to get into Vee birth and no headroom to speak of.

IMHO 25 feet is the optimum size to get all the features you want and yet still be small enough to tow and handle reasonably easily on the water

Both the yacht clubs I belong too have predominantly trailer boat owners as members, and while I know of other clubs that think of trailer boats much the same as trailer trash they are by far in the minority, but they are welcome to their 50 footers which just rot away in their slip in the months or years between being used, just so they can brag they own a REAL yacht

Mike - you may very well be right - but I was talking about the market in the United States - not other places - and in fact there are indications that there may very well be a good market brewing for trailer boats in Europe and other places - but that means again - death to the American Boat Builders - to support a market offshore of America would require a factory offshore of America. For the kids here in the States I don't see a big desire for a large sailboat on a trailer - the young yanks on Facebook seem to want the opposite. Small, nimble, and easy to launch and easy to store. The motor aspect seems to be a big feature with them also.

Maybe the boat builders need to get with the times, maybe a web cam over the table so they can take pics of whats for dinner and one in the cockpit for the always popular selfies for posting on Facebook