MacGregorSailors.com

Moe wrote:I'm 5'9-1/2" and my wife about 4'10". With her head all the way up on the head wall, giving me some extra foot room, and with me folded up, taking up width in the middle where it's much narrower, we could just both squeeze into the forward berth. My head was right at the end of the cushion, meaning a pillow would be hanging over. We aren't very tall, and this was VERY uncomfortable. It confirmed our opinion this berth is NOT for adults.Moe

Forgot to mention the 10' single berth on the port side and the 6' single berth on the starboard side.

It's ALL a compromise.

Actually, I did mention them. The two aft couches are about 68-69", not 6'. Makes a difference for some adults. The narrower forward port cushion would give a taller sleeper room for their feet though. The '05 M dinette beats the '04 M's 5' 8" with 7' 5" (website specs) on the starboard side, and still has 8' 2" (again, website specs), on the port side, but the forward 4' is a bit narrower.

Has any X owner taken the same measurements? I'd be interested in a comparison. Unfortunately, the 1999 X the Cincy dealer advertised was off-site for outboard repair, and we were disappointed we couldn't get the same measurements on an X.

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Moe

Here is my X, a '96.

Aft berth - 80"L x 78" W. Small chunk is removed from the cushion on the starboard side where the head imposes. There is a slight taper at the aft end so it is less than 78" there.

Dinette - 82"L x 38"W. It tapers to the front so it is narrower there. We found out that 38" wide is the exact width of a twin bed. We use a twin size air bed at the dinnete and both my wife (5'-6") and I (5'-8") sleep there. It requires developing the art of synchronized rolling, but we got quite good at it on our recent 23 day trip and overall found we liked the dinette better than the vee berth which we used to use.

Vee Berth - 84" L down the center. 64" wide at the head, tapers to 6" at the foot. With the forward seat back in there is 77" length on the starboard side. With the seat back out the forward dinette cushion adds length for 99" on the starboard side. With an extension on the port side this can be easily matched. When we slept there My wife would use the port side at it's normal length and she had plenty of room length wise but we didn't like the vertical space. Even my son who sleeps there now complains about the restricted height in the foot area. I slept on the startboard side with the seat back out which let me slide up more so both our feet didn't have to share the same narrow space at the bow. Doing this however makes the dinette space un-useable as a berth.

Port Settee - 44"L x 18"W. For a brief while we used this space for our littlest (Good up to 3 years old). We added a lee cloth to keep him from rolling off.

Hey did you notice, I got promoted. I hit 500 posts and became a Captain.

My 1 1/2 cents- the Daggerboard has better performance (slightly) due to the reduced drag on the hull, and may be a little better from a maintenance standpoint, but. . . I like the fact that my CB will come up when I hit something. I sail in areas with sand and mud, so the CB just comes right up no problems. Had a friend rent a small sailboat in Pensacola with a DB, a storm was coming that he was trying to beat back- he ran aground with the DB and could not raise it due the pressure on it. He could not get the boat off the shoal. The storm came in and the waves from the storm and the passing power boats put so much pressure on the boat the DB snapped and the boat capsized. The mast then stuck in the mud (not a Mac obviously) with the hull turtled as they all held on to the boat. The mast eventually snapped as they were rescued by a passing boater.

"Um, you remember that sailboat I rented from you?" They pulled it back in with the mast tied to it- what a mess. Anyway...I just worry about backing up my rudders and CB into something. I like to beach my boat so I like the CB. Not sure if Mac will go back to one though, it doesn't seem many people are having problems with their daggerboards. I don't mind the hump in the cockpit, it separates the dinnete seating floor very well, and with the dinette elevated at window level it makes for a decent view around. I have heard of someone breaking their CB- I think from heavy weather.

All the stuff (nice word for it) in the Mac advertising that they contradict from model to model just goes to show you that it is all a hyped sales pitch. This board is probably the best place for honest opinions on Mac's.

Lastly- Why I like my Mac (1 reason anyway)- I was sailing opposite direction from a keel sailboat, I reversed course, gained and past the other boat until the opposite shore, dropped my sails, picked my way through some crabpots, ran it up on the beach, pulled out the barbeque while the kids played in the water. I am sure it made the other crew watch in amazement as I passed them and then beached a sailboat. Gotta love it.

Jeff S

Port Settee - 44"L x 18"W. For a brief while we used this space for our littlest (Good up to 3 years old). We added a lee cloth to keep him from rolling off.

Oh captain my captain (you won't outrank me for long) Can you explain a bit more about what a lee cloth is?

Moe, have you tried http://www.sailboatowners.com/classifie ... tpl?fno=80? They have a few late model X's there for sale although none might be too close. I may have bought an M if it had a swinging board too. I wonder if it has anything to do with Macs being designed out in California where the water depths are deep in general. In the Tampa Bay area (and at least a thousand miles on either side of us), there is just way too much shallow water for me to favor a dagger design. I got stuck a couple times in my former keelboat..although I guess in most cases, you could probably lift the dagger if you ran aground.

All this talk about the dagger board...

Would it break if you ran into something while sailing? I figured it would just stop the boat if you hit something that big...that was not on the chart (you do navigate with charts and know how to read them???)

If it is just shallow and gradually gets shallower..it should just retract..it did for us in FL. It was a bit shallow..heard some rumbling..pulled the board up an inch and it was fine til we got to deeper water.

The best way to avoid running around is proper navigation. Know your depth. Know your location.

I have my bluechart garmin GPS AND my chart..also confirm the general area with the depth and compare it to the chart.

I would think that some damage to a centerboard would happen and it relies on a hinge to stay in the boat. If you hit something not dead on 000 degrees, it could just snap as a dagger would.

We bought the boat before we knew the pros and cons of dagger vs center board. Both have their fine points. but which provides better performance for sailing?

Paul

A lee cloth is a fabric panel hooked along the edge of the berth and usually to the ceiling or the bunk above that keeps you from falling out of the bed. It is common on offshore boats to have a couple sea berths. These a usually narrow single berths for the off watch crew to sleep in. They typically have a fabric panel that is hooked to the berth along it's edge and the panel has grommets or some other way of attaching line that holds the panel up like a wall so you won't fall out as the boat heels to and fro tacking through the night. Without it that big puff of wind in the night when you are not on the lee (down) side will send you to the floor.

As it says in one book, "In many conditions, your boat will have a rolling motion and your body will be constantly moving from side to side. If you try to sleep in your normal bunk without additional support, your body will be involuntarily fighting the rolling motion the whole time and deep sleep will never come. The addition of a lee cloth to your settee will provide the necessary support that will hold you in place and allow you to relax your whole body, thus getting the important sleep needed on your off watch. Most sailors prefer to sleep towards the center of their boat for the most comfortable motion."

You also see the same thing on some boats in the center line of the vee berth or large double berths. The idea is to reduce the area you roll around in so you can actually sleep as the boat sails on through the night. It's really the same idea as a rail on a bunk bed or the netting walls you stick under the matress on your kids beds when they are just learning to sleep without falling out.

I our case I sewed a 12" high panel that was as long as the port settee in front of the galley. I added a couple loops to the side of the galley that I could attach one end to and added a short rod that stuck up at the vee berth end. This created a fabric wall that kept our then 3 and 4 year old on the cushion as he slept. Unfortunately he became to tall to sleep there far too soon. Using fabric panels you can make a pretty good crib there for new little ones up until they get to tall. Consider it a bonus 7th berth for those 3' tall and under.

Paul,

While everyone always does there best to navigate properly and avoid hitting things, the reality is that if you really spend any amount of time out there boating eventually you will for whatever reason end up in the wrong place and go aground. I don't think there are many long term sailors who haven't experienced this at one time or another. It's just one of those S**t happens things. As you say you've already done it and I'm sure you were navigating properly.

Without a doubt you can destroy the dagger board of an M under sail. It is not designed to go up on impact. It sounds like in your case you were on a very gradual slope of a hard bottom that was able to push your board up. You experienced an exception, not the rule. In mud you would have stuck fast. Hit rock and you will come to an instant stop most likely with some damage. In all these cases the centerboard of the X will just swing up out of the way although you can get hooked in mud like a fish on a barb if you try to back off. Since the bulk of the boats motion is always straight on from the bow it's hard to hurt the board before it is pushed out of the way.

I was speaking with a guy from the Vancouver Sunsail base who we met on our recent trip. Up here in the Northwest it is very rare to find nice gradual sloped beaches to run around on. All the likely underwater targets are solid rock. They have had two 40' Benateau's returned with severe keel damage from running agound at 7 knots under sail. One took over $40,000 to repair, the whole support pan was pushed up and back. The M daggerboard will, and quite honestly rightly should, fair far worse in a hard grounding. It's much cheaper to replace the crushed board than to repair the cracked hull. The dagger board can be damaged. I know of one here at the board that was already snapped off.

There is no comparison, the X centerboard is far less prone to damage from running aground.

Duane, thanks much for the measurements and congratulations on the 500th post! That's really good info.

Dimitri, thanks for the link. We're keeping watch on as many as possible. Looks like we were a bit too late for the 2003 posted on this site.

Paul, we have a Garmin 178C with the Blue Charts backed up by paper charts, have both taken the USPS Piloting course, and practice good navigation. While it significantly reduces our chances of running around, that doesn't give anyone a talisman against grounding on shifting sandbars on the Gulf Coast, or worse yet, hitting limestone boulders in the Great Lakes, that aren't charted. I have both the Lake Erie and Gulf Coast BCs and will attest they exist. It doesn't eliminate human error and misjudgement. My concern is also about what happens with the daggerboard DOESN'T break, i.e. the passenger injuries that can occur in an unexpected, sudden stop. It's not if, but when, you'll eventually hit something. I've run both daggerboard and swinging centerboard aground when young and foolish, and just prefer the latter on a boat designed for the shallows. But this thread is really about the daggerboard's trunk's impact on the interior design, and it's much more limiting than the much lower swinging centerboard.

FWIW, the 16" centerboard trunk problem is from the keel up. It's much less than that above the cabin sole, i.e. just enough to lift the dinette to a great viewing height. on the X. And with the deeper-V of the M hull, it may be 2" or so less high above the sole.

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Moe

Thanks for the info Duane, you must be handy with a sewing machine. It may be worth trying for my 21 month old, and I guess the key is the post in the front. Perhaps one of our left over bedrails (with the arms that go under the mattress) might work too. Would probably need to be a small one though.

Paul, in the shoal areas of Western Florida, there are many narrow channels cut through. I can be cruising through a channel I've navigated at least a hundred times and its not hard to get distracted by some family event and go 10-20 feet off course and run into the shoal. Now, I won't lose my focus if a channel marker or some other hard obstacle is coming up, but many times around here, you can be virtually in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of meters off shore and still find sandbars. When I chose between an M and a X, I had noted a long list of pros and cons for each boat. I'm sure the DB performs better with its smaller opening and all, but on my list, the CB was a pro for the X and a con for the M. This might not be the case if you sail a different area or always keep out of the shallows. But my last sailboat had a 3 foot draft (and that was the shoal keel version) and one of the biggest reasons I traded it for a 26X was due to the shallow water abilities of the Macs (and yes, an M has a lot better shallow water ability than any keelboat will ever have..just that an X is better than an M for that). If I was going to stay in deep water all the time, I may have wanted a different sailboat altogether.

Duane Dunn, Allegro wrote:Paul,

While everyone always does there best to navigate properly

Not everyone..that is for sure!! From my experience in Boston, the seamanship of boat owners (usually powerboat) is pi$$ poor. We had a small runabout for over 12 years and was constantly amazed at what people would do on the water (still am). We can look no further to the mac case where 2 people were killed. You can never take the human factor out. I rarely see any navigation going on with recreational (usually power) boats. For sailboats it is more important with keel/CB/DB. I am sure that sailboat owners are far more aware of navigation importance than powerboat owners.

In my case in FL, yes..the water got shallower slowly..and it was sand..no biggie, but up here it is more important with rocks. when we were down there..i was not navigating other than staying between the markers..then took a turn and was on the wrong side of the markers..thought I had water..didn't.

I have since taken a coastal navigation course and have a clue now. Still havent plotted a dr course or anything in real life..since we haven't had a destination yet. More importanly have not had time to install a compass. Heck the boat spends more time at the shop than my driveway (It is at the honda dealer now as a matter of fact). Just trying to get things on the boat not to break.

My only point is that prevention is the key...not rely on the boat's design. Yes sh#t happens..but at least we all have the advantage of being able to bring our boards up. That is cool for a boat of our size. I still would prefer to avoid hitting something with an X as well as an M. I wouldn't like to test the impact theory on either design.

My point before the db/cb tangent is that any boat is more than the parts you can measure with a tape measure. Just because some things are more important to one owner, doesn't mean it is of same importance to someone else. I am 6' 250# and can sleep in all 6 locations on our 04M. Some more comfortable than others. I would never have 6 people on it sleeping that is for sure, but like the literature says, it is possible. This boat should not be confused with the QE2.

Personally I am more interested in the sailing performance than the camper type features.

Paul

Duane Dunn, Allegro wrote: .... Hey did you notice, I got promoted. I hit 500 posts and became a Captain ....

Congratulations, Duane.
Guess you never debated with Loopy Dave, eh? ... you'd have made rank a lot sooner.

I'll bet Heath set the Admiral rank to be at 1000 posts...

And with that, the balloons fall from the ceiling and the whistles go off...

Dimitri-2000X-Tampa wrote: ... And with that, the balloons fall from the ceiling and the whistles go off...

Or, your Mac goes off a downwind swell, showing a true airspeed of 17 mph!

I'm not real sure about the galley positions here, but I did a little manipulation of the M drawing from the web site to "slide" the galley and compare it with the X layout:



The M's daggerboard trunk and head wall were done in red to show the separation of occupants on the forward couch and dinette seats. The comparison with the X shows how much easier it is to slide in the X forward dinette seat than squeeze between the daggerboard and table.
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Moe