MacGregorSailors.com

You will not have any performance except in a gale and who wants to be out there then.

Here is an idea.
An A frame mast. It's stepped at the aft end of the cabin and When down, overhangs the bow as much as practical. Maybe ten feet. it should rest on the pulpit.
You fly one big roller furling genoa from the top. No boom. Hello oversized bimini!
Raising could be done by cable winch mounted in the stern. Also acts as backstay. No side stays to mess with.
You would need to "help" the mast up for the first few feet even with the winch. Don't know how lowering would work. May need to be refined.
With this system the boat could stay rigged. The foil furling gear could be gently bent in half and lashed to the part of the mast that sticks out over the front of the boat.
This rig will not point well but would be fine for off the wind work.
Obviously the hinged mounts for the two legs must be stout. Or use two stock mast base plates.
No it wouldn't be cheap
Well, the parts are actually cheap. Aluminum tubing is not that expensive. But the welding is extensive.

Would be careful about cutting the original but installing a smaller mast and sails sounds good to me but then we often go out without mast anyway when just cruising in rivers, mind you our with the modicications to the carrying height etc makes it pretty easy to set up as everything is on the mast ready and just a case of sliding it back and winching.
For sure when setting up for a big trip theres some time loading but the mast and sails are only minutes, actually we were in the process of removing the mast for a trip of about 6 weeks down our Murray River but got word that I need two knees reconstructed so may be put on hold but being almost 66 have been feeling the strain with crook knees and the admiral certainly doesn't like heeling, getting a bit excited about a smaller sail myself.
Thanks for suggesting that just shows what this site and group think can acheive.
Re that site converting Macs it looks interesting but just wonder how much the extra speed would gain in speed and lose in econmomy and then whether it's worth it?

With a shorter mast etc. you will "need" a spinnaker of some kind. A custom asymetrical would gain you some sail area even over a 150 genoa, and make up for your shorter mast(as compared to a Mac with no spinnaker). If your desire for sailing is just quiet cruising then having a smaller rig that's geared for downwind performance would be fine, just motor upwind.

Willy

Well for me that sounds great Whipsyjac love using the spinnaker and usually either wait for better weather or motor upwind anyway, definitely will investigate this as the really suits my and our style of basically gunkholing with a little sailing sometimes.
Have enjoyed the full sail kit over the years but it is a chore and a source of tension at times aboard and sure plenty on here with that problem but would not destroy the original, both would be good, guess it all depends how you use the boat.

I can understand your situaton. Our 2001 X becomes more and more of a challenge to rig, launch and retrieve, as we age. I will be 75 in August...hard for me to believe, but the records show it .
I launch off the trailer in the spring, with the aid of a buddy (over 80). Rig the boat myself in our slip. Single hand or sail with friends and Carmen over the summer and reverse the rigging and launch process in the fall. The key thing for me is to slip the boat over the sailing season.......if I had to launch, rig and reverse the process for every sailing outing, the X would have been gone a decade ago.
As to rigging , I could not do it without the stock mast raising kit. Slow, but gets the stick up and down.
My next step may be to have the local Travel-lift folks (their well is 3 slips down from my slip) put the the boat rigged (stick up) and shift it to and from nearby winter storage storage....the problem being that my motor winterizing Honda dealer is several miles away and does not travel. So I delay on this alternative.
For me a shorter mast would not help. However, you could perhaps adapt the castoff rig of an old smaller sloop, e.g. a Venture 21 or 17 (my old 17 was about 150 sq ft if I recall), and sail without reefing on windy days and become a motorsailor on calmer days. Store the stock X rig for when you sell the boat.
Were I you, I would slip the boat for the season or get a much smaller boat, say in the 14-21 ft range.....or better yet do an Olin Stevens and crew for younger friends and let them do the heavy lifting.
Were I 60 again, I am sure I would say differently.
Good luck. Keep sailing.
Ron

NOT a crazy idea at all.
Along with some other great ideas along the way as I read down.
Maintaining a mast even if shorter with any kind/size of sail is, in my opinion, a very important safety feature.
Should your outboard fail, you are not left stranded.
Beats taking off the mast completely.

Happy Power Sailing

Octaman

With a nice windshield and a very light hardtop to cover the cockpit the boat makes a nice looking motor cruiser anyway.
I was getting about 12 mpg at 5 knots, and that's with the rig up. It's pretty economical to run that way. Go sailing with friends who have a sailboat if you begin to miss it.

Octaman wrote:Maintaining a mast even if shorter with any kind/size of sail is, in my opinion, a very important safety feature.
Should your outboard fail, you are not left stranded.
Beats taking off the mast completely.

In addition to the safety aspect, which has great value IMO, there is also the stability benefit.

Having sail up, even reduced sail due to a shorter mast, can make the boat much more stabile in a seaway. Drop the centerboard whenever possible, for the same reason, and raise some sail, and a light, twitchy floating Clorox bottle becomes a stabile, comfortable motor sailer with a giant cabin for its size.

I understand your take on this. It is funny, I don't have your experience, I am new to this. I think I will motor (take the sail rigging off) during the summer and sail using a slip or dry slip in the winter (only two seasons in Phoenix), it is the rough equivalent of paying someone for your time to step the mast. The admiral helped me step the mast in the summer heat last weekend, and she is 'on board' . So many fixes and upgrades to do first though.

Ixneigh wrote:You will not have any performance except in a gale and who wants to be out there then.

Here is an idea.
An A frame mast. It's stepped at the aft end of the cabin and When down, overhangs the bow as much as practical. Maybe ten feet. it should rest on the pulpit.
You fly one big roller furling genoa from the top. No boom. Hello oversized bimini!
Raising could be done by cable winch mounted in the stern. Also acts as backstay. No side stays to mess with.
You would need to "help" the mast up for the first few feet even with the winch. Don't know how lowering would work. May need to be refined.
With this system the boat could stay rigged. The foil furling gear could be gently bent in half and lashed to the part of the mast that sticks out over the front of the boat.
This rig will not point well but would be fine for off the wind work.
Obviously the hinged mounts for the two legs must be stout. Or use two stock mast base plates.
No it wouldn't be cheap
Well, the parts are actually cheap. Aluminum tubing is not that expensive. But the welding is extensive.

You could avoid any welding by having the A frame stepped at the current chainplates (bolted to them) which are already reinforced to handle it, and having it fold backwards to the cockpit as the mast currently does. It's then merely a matter of walking the furler to the bow pulpit and pinning it as usual, and then tensioning the whole rig with a backstay on a Johnson lever.

The center of effort would be well forward of normal and result in considerable weather helm. The genny would backwind against the A-Frame bars, but that would likely help keep in in shape. Put both jiblines on the winches and it would auto-tack, which means that you could helm with an autopilot and a remote from inside the cabin if you wanted to.

Well the idea was to eliminate long lengths of overhanging spar. If the mast overhung the front it's ok. Within reason. Also having the mast stepped back there should not affect the balance much. The boat should have a neutral helm unil you began to furl the jib more then half way in.
On further thought in this direction I deem the engineering too expensive and difficult to be worth persueing.
So far I prefer to raise the mast In the water. Take it down, also. I find a quiet place with no audience and take my time. The individual parts are fairly light. The big thing is sliding that mast back. I am slowly refining the process. Loosening the lifelines makes it easier.

dlandersson wrote:In fact, someone has a business just setting up Macs as travel cruisers.

http://economycruisers.com/

How is this better than simply leaving the standing rigging at home?

Not much except for upgrading the motor removing the seat, rigging and lifelines etc making it way to hard too convert back.

Ixneigh wrote:The big thing is sliding that mast back. I am slowly refining the process. Loosening the lifelines makes it easier.

Out of curiosity, what's the difficulty in sliding the mast back? I'm not trying to be a smart guy - it's just that I'm working on some improvements to my in the area of mast handling, and I'd like to know what your experiences are.

I've already made a new mast roller for the crutch (helm mounted), which is a jillion times easier to roll the mast over now, and I'm looking into ways to make mast handling more stable when it's rolled back to the mast step location, as the CG is too far back for the standard crutch location.

Taking off the spreaders makes it a piece of cake, except that you then have to put the spreaders back on. My biggest problem with it is waddling around on the bow on the trailer where the slightest mis-step means dropping me on the hard.

I wish MacGregor made a cat boat similar to the com-pacs. Forward mast and a gaff rig would be a whole lot simpler to raise for trailering, and cat boats point about as well as a Mac anyway.