"Donal" wrote in message
...

"Jeff Morris" wrote in message
...
"Donal" wrote in message
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That's not the point. The point is that the boats is capable of
rolling
over if
misued. This is an extremely unusual property for a 26 foot sailboat.

Rubbish, Jeff!

Many boats are capable of rolling over if they are misused. In fact,
I'm
lucky that I haven't dipped my masthead in the water yet.

There are many "tippy" 26 foot boats. They need to be handled
correctly.
If we were to hold the manufacturer responsible for every capsize, then
we
would consign most high performance monohulls to history.


Rubbish, Donal??? Name me one 26 foot sailboat, other than a water
ballast boat
with an empty tank, that will easily roll over under power, with no wind
or
seas. Sure, its fairly easy to broach many boats under sail, etc,

That's what I was thinking of.

But that's not what we're talking about.




but that's
not the situation we're talking about. Under power it usually takes a
lack of
ballast, and too much power, and that is an unusual property of the Mac.

Not if you follow the instructions.

Jim told us that the warnings needn't be taken literally.




You learn about your boat's handling characteristics through experience.


This boat has qualities outside of the experience of most boaters, which was
part of the problem. You still haven't told us about another 26 foot cruising
sailboat that will roll over under power because there were 8 adults aboard. I
didn't even say that was inherently bad, only that it was unique.


All boats are different. It is up to the owner to know what his boat is
capable of.

True, but it wasn't the owner. And remember, this boat is marketed to novices.



If we take your point of view to its logical conclusion, then it would
become illegal to manufacture any of the high performance sailing boats.
Most of them will capsize if they are not handled correctly.

I was only making the point that the warnings should not be ignored. The
problem I have is that on the one hand they say its dangerous to run without
ballast in many situations, but on the other hand the high speed, which can only
be achieved without ballast, figures prominently in the literature and sales
pitches. This is what the discussion has really been about.



The end result of your approach is that we would only be able to sail long
keeled boats that had positive floatation. Can't you see that the world
would be a miserable place if boats were regulated to such an extent?

But that's not what I've been talking about at all, Donal. You've just been
rather slow to figure this out, haven't you?