MacGregorSailors.com

Minus the drift, I've moved up to a 38' foot Beneteau and remain engaged and interested in this board for three reasons:

1) All of the general sailing forums (Cruisers Forum, SailNET, and Sailing Anarchy) are inhabited by hideous trolls who aren't even the real kind of trolls that live under bridges--Nay--they're ARMCHAIR TROLLS who don't really know anything about living under bridges and charging tolls, they just talk as if they do. All you do is answer questions from noobies with good advice and then spend dozens of posts defending your answers to non-toll collecting, non-bridge dwelling, armchair trolls. Pointless. Worse than photography forums if you can imagine such a thing.

2) All of the people here are great. Even (and perhaps especially) BOAT. I've met about a dozen of them in person and to a person, they're all the very best sort of people. Heck, I'm probably the snootiest person here. I've become personal friends with three of the people on this board, and expect to remain so for the balance of my days.

3) I still love my MacGregor and wish it was big enough. Also I haven't sold it yet for reasons I can't quite explain.

Anyway, feel free to stick around.

EZ wrote:

The Mac does not have a capacity rating and placard like smaller boats. The factory recommends a crew of six but obviously that doesn't account for the spectrum of crew ranging from jockies to sumo wrestlers. You can overload this boat with 4 and be fine with 10, all while complying with "regulations"

I think you are correct from a technical perspective. I just question from a legal perspective. If something went wrong beyond the operator's control, would they be liable b/c the number of people on board exceeded factory recommendation? The 4th of July capsize incident years ago with 11 people on board (three of them children) comes to mind.[/quote]

No doubt an attorney would use this against you but an equal defense attorney would force them to prove overloading contributed to the incident. These are the last things in the world on my worry spectrum, slightly behind Skylab.

EZ wrote:So that's 7 people total? Isn't the X rated for 6?

I guess overloading a boat is not a big deal for some.

Your boat is X-rated? Overloaded with Peaches??

The later 26Ms do in fact have a capacity placard stating six persons. The manual also states no more than four persons while planing and no more than six under sail.

I've had 12 on board, but it's a bit crowded. I've sailed in the open pacific with 11. The weight actually helps as long as you keep it low (inside the cabin) and balanced.

The lowest stability of these boats is when there are a lot of weight forward on the bow, and the boat is hit by a wave from 90 to 270 degrees (abeam to aft) (while unballasted). This is what occurred on the 26D that capsized here in San Diego--all the guests were arrayed along one side of the bow, and the boat was hit by a wake and a gust while un-ballasted and sailing on the headsail only. They really did everything possible to destabilize the boat.

I don't know of any 26M capsizes.

Keep bow weight to two or three kids maximum and have them distributed on both sides, and keep the boat bow-to any wave action.