(Steven Fisher) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Quest0029 wrote:
This site may be of interest-
http://www.eskimo.com/%7Emighetto/murrelet.htm

Yeah, mullet's site. A standing joke on sailing anarchy. Read this
thread on the SA forums, "The future of yacht design"

http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums...showtopic=2833

-steve


For many yrs, purists refused to recognize multihulls as legit
sailboats and many still do not although many multis have made extreme
voyages. I suspect the same thing is happening with the mac26 genre.
I have heard of few accidents involving the Mac26 but that may be from
not paying attention although I do hear of accidents involving REAL
sailboats fairly often. When Mike Plant was killed in his REAL
sailboat from the keel falling off there was not an outcry about REAL
sailbaots being unsafe.
When i first saw Hunters years ago, i was apalled at the poor quality
compared to my older S2 but when I look at newer ones, it is evident
that good engineering and material advances have probably made them
more than equal to my S2 in quality. I believe the same is true of
the Mac26. Its newer types of materials and construction is probably
better than the older materials and construction methods that went
into high quality boats of yore. By analogy, my fibreglas middle of
the road S2 is a far better boat than a very high quality boat built
in the 1940s and a middle of the road boat built now is better than a
high quality boat built in the late 70s. A lower cost boat built
today may be equal to a middle of the road boat built in the 70s.
From what i can tell, most mac26 owners recognize the limits of their
vessels and many discuss upgrading the equipment. Should a Mac26 be
sailed out of sight of land? I dunno, but I have seen even an Island
Packet that I refused to sail on that was regularly sailed across the
Gulf of Mexico.
I wonder if the word Multihull causes the blood pressure of ppl here
to go up as does the name Mac26.