"Gregory Hall" wrote
Hello, I guess it's customary for newbys to introduce themselves. My
name's Greg and I don't have a sailboat (yet).

And if you get a MacGregor 26X you still won't have one. But it does
make a great water toy and road camper.

.... So I'm going to hang on
some of the boating groups to see what I can learn.

It would be better to hang around a sailing club and get some on-water
experience.... lots of boats out there need crew.


.... Is this group always
so off-topic?

Most of the time, yes. Wait 'till you see it in an election year.

...... It took me fifteen minutes just to
block about half the posts, mostly the ones that were spam and
cross-posted to a dozen or so other sites.

Once you know who to ignore, this is a pretty good group even though
the best regulars are not as regular as they used to be.


"Maxprop" wrote:
Hi, Greg--welcome. Yeah, we have lots of flonkers here, but it's not a
chore to filter them as they appear.

Plus the flonkers are really stupid about their ID's and subject
lines, so they are very easy to filter en masse.

.... As for OT posts, we have lots of
those, too. Most of the sailing content is fairly esoteric, so you may or
may not gain much insight here if you are a true novice. But one never
knows . . .


Agreed. That's because most of the regulars here are sailors of long
enough term experience that we don't talk much about which way to pull
the tiller when tacking (although I recall a number of excellent
discussions of helming for various basic maneuvers).

It also makes it easy to spot the fakers.


Oh, I might make a comment once in a while but since I don't have much
experience I'll keep quiet most of the time.

Why not ask questions? Some of the best discussions start that way.

... I was partial to the
Macgregors but there seems to be a lot of negative comments about them.

Generally the negative comments come from two types of people- those
who have no knowledge or experience with them, and those who have
enough experience with other types of boats to recognize their
deficient sailing characteristics. The people who rave about them
generally don't have much experience in anything else.

Personally, I think the main thing is to get a boat one can enjoy and
not worry about what others say.


Only one or two subscribers seem to say good things about them. I think
the new 26XM is very stylish. It just looks modern and streamlined to me.

I'll leave this topic to those who seem obsessed by it.


You are gaining wisdom, grasshopper

Fresh Breezes- Doug King