I believe the stock S swing centerboard is glass. Ours is an aftermarket ruddercraft.com that is HDPE. There is no need to lock it down as there isn't much weight to it.Does the swing keel models use fiberglass for the keel and does it have a way to hold it down. I like the swing keel idea if you hit say a sand bottom it will kick back. Im looking at a few brands of boats. Maybe a Flying Scot too.
It very well might move to some degree but never heard of anyone doing anything about it. The rudder for sure needs to be locked down one way or another or there is a good chance you might break it if it is trailing straight out. In most situations the centerboard is probably dragging on the sides of the trunk which might limit its rearward movement,I wondered if the swing keel move back from going through the water but I guess it doesn't.
Yes, they could definitely do that, although it would probably be easier for them to re-make the molds from the original drawings. Now that the company is defunct there'd be nothing to stop anybody from taking molds from an existing 26 D or S and making new boats with them. But making the molds for the liners would be tricky. You'd pretty much have to destroy the existing boat to take a full set of molds from it. You could take molds from just the hull and deck and still re-use the original boat, but you'd have to figure out some other way of doing the interior.If Macgregor really wanted to make the classic design again, and the molds have been destroyed, would they be able to make new molds from an existing boat?
Also, I think the C, D, and S designations are informal. So far as I know they were never used by the company. C ("classic") refers to both the D ("daggerboard") and S ("swing keel") versions and is used to distinguish the classic 26s from the later "powersailors." D and S are used to distinguish the two families of classic 26s from each other.The C, S, D, X and M designations only apply to the 26' Macs.