Why a Macgregor 26M Power Sailor?

Why a Macgregor 26M Power Sailor?

Like I said in my “about this blog” post.  I grew up on the water and my first boating with me at the helm was sailing.  However, living in a lake front community, many of my friends had ski boats.  If the wind was blowing we would go sailing on my dad’s O’Day Javelin and if there was no wind we would go water skiing on my friend’s ski boats.  The one thing that I really liked about the motor boats was we could travel farther faster.  A Macgregor 26M Power sailor combines the best of both worlds.

 It is a sailboat that sails respectably well, but it is also a powerboat that can sleep five or six comfortably and travel at speeds of 25 mph.  As an adult I kept sailing on two small boats of my own, but it was difficult to make sailing a family event.  I would take the kids out but could only really do so one kid at a time.  Occasionally we would borrow Dad’s bigger sailboat and go out as a family, but I began to really want a big boat of our own that we could take whenever we wanted on our own schedule.  My son shared my love of sailing, but my wife and daughters prefer power boating especially if there is no wind.  I had heard of the power sailor design from the macgregorsailors.com website that I frequented to get information about my Dad’s more traditional Macgregor.  From the website I found the Mac factory website and ordered the sales DVD for the power sailor.  The original DVD is 55 minutes.  Here is a 5 minute condensed version: 

After viewing the DVD countless times the whole family was sold on the power sailor concept.  We did consider other options.  By this time I had two small sailboats, a Laser, and a Laser 2.  We considered getting a cabin cruiser and towing one of the small sailboats with us, so I could still sail.  However, the prices of even a used cabin cruiser were higher than buying a brand new Macgregor.  See the attached price comparison slide.  Note these are 2015 prices, the Mac26M was much cheaper when we bought in 2006.

When we looked at the features of the Macgregor and how we wanted to use the boat on the lakes and rivers of East Tennessee it became an easy decision.  We did consider some used traditional fixed keel sailboats that would have been less expensive, but then we realized that we would be locked into only sailing our local area.  Granted you can sail all the way from the Tennessee River to the Gulf of Mexico via the Tenn-Tom waterway, but in a traditional sailboat that trip takes over two weeks at hull speed of only 8-10 mph max.  With a trailerable sailboat we can be at the Gulf of Mexico in ten hours or less towing the boat.  Even the Tenn-Tom trip can be completed in only 6 or 7 days at 25 mph in a power sailor.  So the reasons we bought this boat can be summed up by these bullets:

1. Good sailboat
2. Good powerboat
3. 6ft 2in standing headroom
4. Sleeps six.
5. Enclosed head (bathroom for the non-nautical types)
6. Boat can be beached.
7. Light enough to tow with a car. (though I prefer towing with my truck, many around the world tow this with normal passenger cars)
8. Inexpensive when compared to boats with similar accommodations