Balancing the boat with additional ballast trim

[Meriachee]

Ive been messing with that but found you cant get the CB to drop fast enough when heading back upwind and just seconds delay seems to matter in a race.

Why? Everybody here raises it downwind, and nobody ever complained about the time it took to lower. Adding weight to it at what overall cost? Some of these guys are crazy enough to take the outboards off and put them down below, and some of them are crazy enough to get more than partway through the turn before releasing the board, with predictable results. Fun to watch and cheaper than a trip to Six Flags.

 

[walt]

Its easy to raise the CB going down wind. But I dont think it will drop going down wind - it has to swing down against the water flow. As soon as you start putting any lift of the CB, its very difficult to either move it up or down. What I found I had to do to get it do drop after being up was to head back up wind and swing the through the direct wind direction.. it was not a fast thing to do.

Why do such a thing.. well.. that is the fun thing about owning the old Mac.. I enjoy experimenting and things like that just wont affect the value of the boat much at all. So.. the anwser to why might be "because I can"... Also gives this old guy something to do.. LOL..

 

[BudGates]

I think we're missing one important detail here. We're talking about two entirely different boats. Walt's centerboard is just that. It's an un-weighted centerboard, not a swing keel. It may indeed need a little extra weight to help it drop while under load.

 

[Meriachee]

Walt's tag says it's an 'S'.

 

[walt]

I thought Meriachee also used to own a 26S (same as I have)?? FYI, the water ballast is somewhat what allows you to safely raise the CB going downwind (or DB for the 26D) because the location of CB has no effect on righting moment. You may be able to do this also with heavy swing keels.. I dont know but doing that will affect the righting moment. The CB on the water ballast also doesnt weight much so also no real danger of it damaging anything from a violent swing.

 

[alexco38]

My keel on the 26S rises when I close haul. I noticed it by accident when I snug up the haul up line and found it quite loose. Really annoying.
I dropped the keel down about 18-24 inches on the jacked up trailer, drilled a hole near the highest point and poured lead shots (for bird hunting) into the cavity. Filled it with epoxy and let it hardened before covering the hole as it expands during cure. I can't remember the exact weight of lead shots but enough to make the keel drop fast and stay down.

 

[Meriachee]

We're certainly not talking about the Catalina lads. This boat has 4000lbs of winged lead and it better be firmly attached.... My Mac was a 93S, and the keel was definitely used to advantage downwind

 

[alexco38]

I use a Coleman rechargable air matress inflator to blow air into the ballast tank of a Macgregor 26S with the water drain open. The boat raises up about 4-5 inches which made it easy to load onto the trailer. Took about 20 minutes. The pressure is not very high, just need to be higher than atomosphere and nature will take care of the rest. There is no pressure in the ballast tank per say as the air will push the water out.

 

[walt]

This boat has 4000lbs of winged lead

You might need a 4:1 leverage or so to pull that up... be my guess..

 

[walt]

something probably interesting and related to balance on these particular boats. I for the most part have only used the CB either all the way down or all the way up. But.. its also easy to set it part way down and this is also what happens when I first try and release it from being all the way up. It easily drops to about 45 degrees, getting it all the way down is what take time. Ive heard of people setting the CB at a rake to balance the sail and boat in some conditions.. dont know how well that works and there are probably better ways to correct balance. The swept back foil should have both lower lift and drag and likely can be stressed a little harder before stalling and many people do pull the centerboard up a ways for maneuvering slowly in a marina where the high aspect foils are more likely to stall. The ruddercraft rudder is Naca 0012 so I think the centerboard may also be this. If the CB is swept back 45 degrees, the thickness of the foil remains the same but the chord in line with the water flow increased by a factor of 1.41. This means you now have a Naca 0009 foil shape. The more you pull the CB up, the lower that forth digit of the Naca number gets. What does this mean for L, D and stall.. I dont know, just sort of interesting that you still have a Naca shape foil with the rake but it changes the numbers.

 

[Bfranchini]

Back to the boat trimming issue... I added 130 lbs of water in bladders to the lazaret and I haven't noticed any difference in the way she sails. I could have done that by adding human ballast as far as where I got the idea of weighing down the stern, I read it in a couple of naval adventures It seemed to be common practice to weigh down the stern on frigates (I don't own a frigate nor am I armed with 12 pounders!) it may sound funny but most of these old British authors were experienced yachtsmen, so their advice may be worth something...
On the heeling issue... I managed to heel quite a few times at 15 deg without my mate blanching and calling to abandon ship in fact she was at the tiller and barely noticed.
Thanks for the advice on the CB, I too was having trouble dropping it. I usually pick it up at the marina because my buoy is in a very shallow area. Now I'll just turn to windward for a second and let it drop.
This has been fun and I learned a lot from all your advice, thank you all
Bill

 

[centerline]

I'm sure Macgregor didn't build the trailers. They most likely purchased a generic boat trailer and had it modified to fit the Mac hull with no regard for balance except to insure that the tongue doesn't fly up in the air when released from the tow vehicle. With my V-222 I would remove the outboard and attach it to the trailer just below the bow. That was a pain in the neck but gave enough tongue weight for towing.

Im not sure if macgregor built ALL the the trailers they put under their boats or not, but I assume they did build some because mine has a MAC serial number... I would assume a vendor would have followed the practice of using their own serial number system on the trailers they built themselves, as this is how its normally done to keep the liability on the builder and not the supplier if something should go terribly wrong with the product...

 

[BudGates]

I thought Meriachee also used to own a 26S (same as I have)?? .

If that's the case, then it's all good. I just saw that the profile said Catalina 270.

 

[Meriachee]

My profile is current and doesn't reflect my previous boats. I wouldn't put too much stock in what the profiles say, there are a number of people who, if for no other reason than length of time spent owning one, have some qualification to speak to a topic. I owned a brand new Mac 26c in 1992, kept it for 15 years, and trailered it all over western Canada. Raced a bunch, won some, cruised a lot and modified a ton of stuff to make it easier to handle both on and off the water. I don't need to talk about my other boats as a basis for qualification to speak to a topic.
With all due respect Bud, this is the second time you have questioned my input to a MacGregor topic, the first was a shot across the bow in a manner that suggested that I had no idea what I was talking about since there was no headline that suggested I owned one. I would ask, politely, that maybe you give people a little more credit than that. Some of us have been to this rodeo, wore out a couple of the hats, and can bring insightful and well thought out input to the topic. I will simply ignore the topic if my comments need to be qualified.

 

[BudGates]

My profile is current and doesn't reflect my previous boats. I wouldn't put too much stock in what the profiles say, there are a number of people who, if for no other reason than length of time spent owning one, have some qualification to speak to a topic. I owned a brand new Mac 26c in 1992, kept it for 15 years, and trailered it all over western Canada. Raced a bunch, won some, cruised a lot and modified a ton of stuff to make it easier to handle both on and off the water. I don't need to talk about my other boats as a basis for qualification to speak to a topic.
With all due respect Bud, this is the second time you have questioned my input to a MacGregor topic, the first was a shot across the bow in a manner that suggested that I had no idea what I was talking about since there was no headline that suggested I owned one. I would ask, politely, that maybe you give people a little more credit than that. Some of us have been to this rodeo, wore out a couple of the hats, and can bring insightful and well thought out input to the topic. I will simply ignore the topic if my comments need to be qualified.

I meant no disrespect Meriachee. I apologize if I offended you. I just wanted to be sure that we were all talking about the same thing here.

 

[Meriachee]

We were. It would be hard to raise a fixed keel, and given the size of my kite on the 270, would even in light wind be somewhat suicidal to think such things.
No harm, no foul.