In article .com,
wrote:
The elitists here who feel that only "traditional" designs belong on
the water need to loosen their yachtie captains hats and get over the
Mac26 and realize that it works very well enabling the less affluent
among us to go sailing and to do far more sailing than those who mainly
sail from yacht club bar stools. In spite of their apocryphal stories
of Mac26 disasters they can never back up, I have read of many great
Mac26 trips including the entire ICW, the inside passage to Alaska,
Catalina, Bahamas. From what I can tell, the current Mac26 is built
better than the original Hunters and some Beneteaus. As far as safety
is concerned, it seems considerably safer than most power boats and a
strong case can be made for it being safer than many other sail boats.

I wouldn't know about elistists... and, while I like traditional
designs, I have no problem with people who want to sail on Macs or any
other boat. What I said was that they're fine for some conditions, but
not for others. This is true of all boats, but Jimmy gets all in a
lather when someone suggests that they're not great boats in
general. Sure, the newer ones are better than the older ones. Sure,
there are always people who do extraordinary things with equipment
that isn't really designed to do it. They might even be better than
the oringal Hunters, but that's not really saying to much is it? As to
being safer than other boats, I guess it depends on the other
boat. Care to give us some examples of other new boats that are less
safe than Mac?




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"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com