Either a Hake Yachts Seaward 26RK ($56K)
http://www.seawardyachts.com/26rk.html
or a Corsair 28 ($100K)
http://www.corsairmarine.com/models/cor ... rt-cruiser
I seriously looked at the Corsair for years. I loved the idea of a fast, trailer-able trimaran. Reasons I didn't go with the Corsair:
(1) Did I mention the 100K?
(2) Factory had shut down in Chula Vista (hour from my house) and re-opened in Vietnam. No thanks.
(3) I crewed on one and I realized the cabin was fine for two but not appropriate for my family. It was fast as hull though, we passed every displacement sailor on the water that day. 14 knots was no problem in a 15 knot wind. Amazing sail, if you have a chance to do it some time, do it.
Then I looked seriously at the Hake. It's hands down a better sailboat than the Mac (more like the 26S or D, it's a pure sailboat). The reasons I didn't go with the Hake are:
(1) I live in San Diego. Hake Factory is in Florida, and I would have lost $6K in shipping alone. I did have a deal worked out where they would ship a boat to the L.A. boat show, and I'd take possession afterwards to eliminate the shipping costs. Contrast that to the MacGregor factory where I picked up the boat from the factory one afternoon on my way home from work. It's a big difference for me--I don't want to be that far from parts and spares.
(2) Failsafety: The Hake has an electrically winched 600 lb. keel with a bulb. What happens when there's no power and you have to get that keel up?
(3) Trailerability: it's enough of a pain getting a Mac onto the trailer. Add anther 18 inches out of the water for the keel bulb (plus what happens if you "miss") and you you've got a lot more hassle it would seem to me. Also it's a much heavier 6000lb. tow.
I'd known about the Mac the entire time and had dismissed it out of hand years earlier because I didn't care about the powerboat aspect and didn't want any of the powering trade-offs--I wanted a "no compromise" sailboat that I could trailer. To be frank I saw it as kind of a cheap gimmick.
I didn't come back around to it until I realized that there simply wasn't another boat on the market that met all of my criteria, and if I wanted a boat I was going to have to look seriously at the Mac. Why did it meet all of my criteria? Precisely because it is a "compromise boat" that it can meet all of my often conflicting requirements.
My concerns with the Mac were the following:
(1) I didn't trust water ballast. I still get a knot in my stomach when we heel over 45 even though I "know" we'll upright. I never got that knot once on my keel-boat, because the quality of knowing was a lot stronger. I'm also still worried that I'll one-day forget to ballast.
(2) I didn't care about or even want the tradeoffs related to power boating. This one I just gave up on--I almost ordered the boat no-motor with the intent of putting a Mercury 9.9 on the back. Only reason I didn't was the steering wouldn't be integrated and I didn't want to do the work myself, so I just capitulated to the ETEC-60. Then I couldn't wipe the grin off my face after the first time I pushed the throttle wide-open on the big bay.
(3) The boat was way too inexpensive. I knew that a boat with quality fit and finish of the same spec and with good hardware would be in the 50K range.
But I have to say I've gradually come around to Roger's theory of "Enough to get the job done, no more, and let the owner upgrade what he cares about". It's actually more optimal from an engineering and sales perspective. People who trash the Mac on quality of fittings (we all do it) need to upgrade a Mac to the same standard of hardware as any other boat they care to compare it to and then see what the price-tag is. Likely the Mac is still thousands cheaper, and now equal. There's not a damned thing wrong with my hull, and everything else is upgradable--to what I want, not what the factory chose. I don't feel bad at all upgrading hardware on the Mac, I feel it's part of the $25K I didn't spend when I bought the boat before I knew what I wanted. I've spent about $4K on upgrades that would have come with a better boat, so I figure I've still got $20K to go before I'm even with what the Hake would have cost me.
So I started lurking on forums, got to this one, and it won me over in a few weeks. Having an active community is exceptionally important to using any boat well. The Hake and Corsairs don't sell enough boats to have active communities of their own. You get generic advice from frankly a lot of blowhards who seem to have religious devotion to their untested ideals. For example you'll hear over and over two refrains about Macs on "various other fora": They're unsafe because of the water ballast (weird how most new designs are going water ballasted) and they're too small and unsafe to do an oceanic crossing. How many of the blowhards saying that have ever done a transocean in their 30yo 26 sloops? Exactly zero. The smallest boat I've ever heard of doing a transatlantic unattended is 27 feet. The size alone tells you it's not a transoceanic boat, and 99.99% of all sailors will never attempt a transoceanic sail. Why that's considered some kind of disadvantage unique to the Mac on other forums is completely beyond me.
On this forum, you get straight up answers about your model of boat you own from numerous people who've been there and done that. It's a qualitative and quantitative difference that should not be undervalued.
Are there things I'd change about my Mac? Sure. But rather than complain about something that isn't 100% optimal for my purpose, I'm just going to change the boat to be optimal for my purpose--And I get to have the fun of doing that. As I said, there ain't nothing wrong with the hull.
, but I have a bad case of bigger boat itis. There are 2 Catalina 30's on my dock. The more I look at them, the more I like them. It is a keel boat and beamy at 10'-11".
every day (mostly alone - - leave me alone when I'm sailing so I can get some peace and quiet) 