MacGregor Motorsailer

MacGregor 

So at last we had a weekend with some sunshine between the rain showers. Off to see a MacGregor motor-sailer for sale close by. We’ve discussed motor sailers quite a bit on this blog and speculated on their appropriateness for my purpose. One advantage of a English motor-sailer is that they tend to be excellent sea boats coming from a traditional fishing boat lineage. Fans, tell you they offer the best of all worlds, heavy stable robust sailing boats with a get you home option of a big powerful engine just in case wind and tide are against you. Critics say that motor-sailers are poor sailboats and not much better as motor vessels.

But a MacGregor is a different kettle of fish, a MacGregor is a American design coming from a very different school of naval architecture. MacGregor have been building sailboats for 40 years and they claim to have sold more sailboats than any other manufacturer.

Their unique feature for their 26-footer is a water ballast system developed during the late 1980s. Essentially, it provides for a heavy or light vessel whenever you want. Despite their size, these boats are particularly easy to tow with water drained out of the ballast tank. Fill the ballast tank when you launch the boat to give it stability when heeled under sail, drain the ballast when you pull the boat back out on the launch ramp and it can be towed by an ordinary car. Under power, the latest MacGregor model is now also a fast powerboat.

Early MacGregor 26’s had swing keels and tillers with a small outboard. The later versions have steering wheels and big outboards. The styling has changed over the years too. The original models looked more like traditional sailboats whereas the 26M looks definitely “Euro-powerboat” in appearance. People seem to love or hate them.


I found  the MacGregor 26 to be quite roomy below with all the amenities I would need. She had:

• A large aft berth and vee-berth forward
• An enclosed head with porta-potty
• A galley area with sink and stove
• A removable table
• 6 feet of headroom under the sliding hatch.

I found the mast-raising system particularly attractive because the ability to raise and lower the mast with ease is one of my very important requirements to get me through the French canals. The MacGregor I visited had her mast raised by the owner on his own in the parking lot beside the launch ramp.

Out in the bay the boat sailed well in a strong breeze under just the mainsail. Roller furling on the jib would have made it easy to extend canvass without leaving the cockpit but she felt incredibly tender. More tender than most sailboats I am used to – more like a dinghy than a cruiser. What is more, despite her surprising ability as a sail boat she actually looks like a powerboat with a mast. She gave me the impression that she might suit a powerboater with an interest in sailing or someone who wants to trailer to distant places, stay onboard a few nights, and be able to race back into port if the weather starts to deteriorate but she had none of the romance I seek.

As a powerboat she looked strange cutting through the water with such a tall mast. As a sailboat she was boxy, high sided skittish and prone to massive leeway. So, she is not for me. Not that I could have afforded her anyway, the asking price was twice as much as my planned budget.

Now this blog has taken on quite a fishing theme in the last week or so and I’m making every effort to get back to main purpose but here is a true story that I simply have to share with you. As you may know the Island of Jersey UK is one of a small archipelago of Islands some 90 miles south of the UK. Politically English but in many ways culturally closer to the French, the principal Islands of the group are Jersey, Guernsey, Herm, Alderney and Sark. Jersey and Guernsey each has its own independent government and there is fierce rivalry between the two. To the Guernseymen, Jersey people are ‘Crapauds’ (Toads), while to the Jerseymen Guernsey people are Donkeys. No citizen of either Island refers to the other Island by name. Instead their neighbouring Island is ‘the other place’. Here is a recent piece of news from ‘the other place’ (Guernsey), reported with glee in the Jersey media.

Guernsey had a fishing competition last week and the prize of £800 went to a local man who presented the judges with a monster Sea Bass freshly caught. Unfortunately another competitor thought he recognised the prizewinning fish and called for an investigation.

How did he recognise the fish? Could you recognise an individual sea bass? Well, maybe yes you could - if the fish in question had been on public view as a live specimen in the local town aquarium. Following his hunch, he visited the aquarium the following day and asked to see the tank in which the sea bass lived – on inspection – no sea bass! It had been stolen.

The winner of the competition was in court on Wednesday charged with stealing a sea bass and fraudulently obtaining £800 in prize money. He was convicted after a the aggrieved angler and aquarium staff identified the sea bass’s head from among a line of other sea bass heads in an identity parade! – Well they say truth is stranger than fiction. You couldn’t make it up!

Seaward

Hooked on Fishing

My nose before the piercing

Friday, was another sea fishing trip out of Jersey with my favourite charter skipper Tony Heart. This was the second or third attempt to make the trip this year, most of the previous ones thwarted by unseasonal weather. Fortunately while the rest of the UK was on flood alert with forecasts of a month’s worth of rain falling within a twenty four hour window, the western coast of France and the Channel Islands were spared. 

We had no sunshine to speak of but the winds were light and the visibility was excellent. It was cold, there was an uneasy swell left over from the previous high winds and the tide was wrong – but what the hell, there was a chance so we took it.

The catch wasn’t so bad, given the conditions, about 40 mackerel to share between us, a bream, a gurnard and a sand eel. There were dogfish too but the jury is out as to whether Mario caught three different ones or the same one three times. 

The high spot of the trip was when I managed to hook myself with a mackerel hook through the nose. Fortunately there was a pair of pliers on board and as the hook went clean through the nostril, it was relatively easy to cut the hook and pull it through the hole created by the barb. It’s a technique worth remembering because there is no way you’d manage to pull the hook out against the barb. In truth the main problem was that the boat was rolling like an old tub at the time so it was difficult for the skipper with the pliers to get an accurate grasp of the hook. One interesting thing however, was that throughout the whole incident I was in no pain – even when I was tugging away at the hook trying to yank it out against the barb.  So, does a fish feel pain when it’s hooked?  I don’t think so. I didn’t. And anyway, if it did it wouldn’t fight so hard.

Dogfish 3 or Dogfish 1 for the third time?

So what has gone wrong with our weather this year? Well according to the BBC, the high level 60mph winds referred to as the Jetstream which usually settle into a pattern to the north of the UK in summer, have settled much further south. As a result they are picking up a great deal of energy and humidity from the Atlantic and the warmer climes in the South of France and that energy is being dissipated as wind, thunder, lightning and torrential rain to the north (over the UK). The problem is that weather systems can settle into a pattern and can be difficult to dislodge. The current weather therefore may be as good as it is going to get this summer. Meanwhile America swelters.

So onto another more optimistic point, a reader emailed me recently with what could have been a solution to my search for an ideal boat. It seems a 16 ft fishing boat has sunk in relatively shallow seas and the US coastguard has deemed it to be a navigation hazard. The owner therefore has to refloat or move it and the estimated cost of hiring the kit and expertise is likely to be in excess of $2,500. A sum, either he has not got or is reluctant to pay. He therefore has announced that he is prepared to sign over ownership to anyone who can salvage her.

In effect, providing I am prepared to fly to Florida, and raise this hulk from the seabed, I can have the boat (and contents estimated to be worth $800) for free. All I then have to do is return the vessel to my beloved France, repair, restore and re-register her there and all my boat search problems will be over. Mmm – maybe not – but a good suggestion in any case – keep ‘em coming folks, good ideas are indiscriminate and they don’t care where they land (a bit like fish hooks really). Out there, somewhere, there is the germ of a good idea.

Seaward

Hooked on Sailing

Writing the other day about the efforts some sailing magazines make in frightening their readers with tales of woe and near disaster in small boats, set me wondering why sailing and boating is such a love or hate activity. What was it that made me a boating person when there was no history of seafairing in my family? Why do I love the sea when so many others fear and loath the experience.

Maybe, it had something to do with the first formative experience. It happened like this.

I was brought up in a small Yorkshire mining town and I didn’t get a chance to try boating until I was at college in Portsmouth UK. The college overlooked the entrance to Langstone Harbour a bottleneck of water with a reputation for overfalls and fierce currents. In the bar tales were told of students canoeing across the entrance on an ebb and being carried clear across to the Isle of Wight. No one knew who it had happened to - but everyone had a friend who …..

In the early seventies, Langstone was a ‘working man’s’ harbour, lots of small boats - many were home-made and some had been converted from ships lifeboats. To my eyes, more used to spoil heaps from the coal mines, it seemed like heaven. The boats, and their owners who turned up in the local pub with deep tans and bags-full of fresh fish, fascinated me. I was an impoverished student so the idea of taking a boat out and coming back with week’s supply of food had enormous attractions but, without boat or funds, the idea didn’t develop until a fellow student - Charlie struck a deal with a boat owner who lived a long way from the harbour. The upshot was that Charlie would look after the boat, keep her maintained and have her ready for the owner each time he arrived to do a spot of fishing.  In return, Charlie would have free use of the boat at all other times.

As the new Skipper of the ‘Blue Moon’ Charlie recruited Paul and me as crew - not for our knowledge of the sea but because we liked the same music and played pool together. We signed on before seeing the boat or questioning Charlie’s credentials to lead the expedition.

Eleven o’clock the next morning saw us looking for the ‘Blue Moon’, ‘varnished all over, clinker built, solid and seakindly’, according to the owner. Three quarters of an hour later Charlie had to admit that he didn’t know what ‘clinker’ meant and that he wouldn’t know a solid or seakindly hull from a  piece of cheese. We found her eventually. She was small, maybe twelve feet max, and the varnish was almost black.  She looked like an old beer barrel.

We found the outboard underneath and dragged her to the water with various bits of tackle we had managed to borrow. The old Seagull started on the first pull and soon we were at the harbour entrance. The ebb was fierce enough for Paul to suggest that we didn’t need the outboard; the current was doing a fine job taking us out to sea. Fatal words! The engine coughed and died. From here on we were running on tidal power, sometimes backwards, sometimes sideways but always out to sea - towards the Isle of Wight. Were we about to prove the bar-room legend?

We were also taking in water, not an obvious leak just a slow seepage into the bilges - a pint every fifteen minutes or so, nothing to worry about so long as you scooped it out from time to time.

At sea the water was choppy enough to make Paul turn green and vomit over the side. He wasn’t happy but Charlie and I decided that if we were to be washed up on the Isle of Wight we may as well take some fish with us. As the only one with a fishing rod, Charlie cast as far as he could, the line raced out until there was no more on the spool, then it left the spool altogether leaving Charlie holding the naked rod, his line and tackle lost on the seabed.

I didn’t have a rod but a friend had given me a hand-line with a hook, weight, and some coloured beads on it. I hooked on a few worms, dropped it over the side and tied it to the sternpost when it touched bottom.  Charlie meanwhile was hand-lining from the bow using Paul’s tackle.

As the Isle of Wight loomed larger Charlie caught a mackerel, the first of three that afternoon. I was impressed. Nothing was happening on my line so I turned to the outboard. My old BSA motorbike frequently broke down so I knew a few things about getting engines started. There didn’t seem to be anything obviously wrong so I checked the fuel line and found an on/off tap similar to one on the BSA. It was switched off.  The seagull had started with a thimble-full of fuel in the carburettor. It had stopped, starved of fuel a few minutes later.  I opened the tap, quietly confident that we’d get home when we were ready.

Charlie’s next fish was small and spiny with the face of the devil himself - we were pleased to get him off the line and out of the boat but a few minutes later he pulled an eel aboard, not huge but a fighter nonetheless. We dropped him into the bottom of the boat along with the mackerel. Shortly afterwards I felt the line jerk - my first fish! The adrenaline burn was out of all proportion to the flattie which I hauled aboard.

As the day wore on Paul became more morose and depressed. We hadn’t caught anything else and so we had to accede to his wish to return home. As predicted, the outboard started first time and soon we were skipping across the sea towards Langstone, two of us at least, regretting the day’s ending and quietly cursing Paul for his less than enthusiastic contribution. Fate took a hand in gaining our revenge however. The boat’s motion under power revived the eel which slithered through the mounting bilgewater and sank its teeth into Paul’s bare foot. His howls could be heard in Southampton.

That evening we turned up in the local pub, tired and tanned with a reasonable bag-full of fish. We’d had a long day and learned a great deal. Why had Charlie arranged for an eleven o’clock departure coinciding with the strongest ebb?

‘I didn’t’, he said. ‘I knew nothing about the tides but I knew you wouldn’t be out of bed any earlier!’

That first trip was one of several that Charlie and I made during a long summer and endless autumn. Each trip taught us something new and gradually our catches and credibility increased. Later that evening I fried the Plaice in butter and it was fresh - like no fish I had eaten before. But now, fourty something years and five boats later, I wonder who was really hooked that day - the fish or me?

Seaward

Boat Fishing

Friday was moving house day, downsizing to a smaller house on the Island because the home in France is where we spend most of our time. Friday was also a date when I had a longstanding arrangement to join a group of friends for a fishing expedition. So, while Susan grappled with crates and boxes of books, I took myself off to the harbour to join up with Tony Hart, skipper of one of the best fishing charter boats in Jersey.

Yes, you're right I owe ..... bigtime!

So, Tony's boat is a fast 33' Aquastar,a powerful sea boat with huge twin diesels which whisked us ten or twelve miles offshore in what seemed like a remarkably short time for a sailing boat man like me. Fishing was for Mackerel initially as bait fish for more interesting species later in the day. Sea bass and Bream were the main catch, along with dogfish and blond ray (which we released). Catch of the day, I guess was a huge mean looking Conger which took twenty minutes to haul aboard. It was at least six feet in length. We kept it on board long enough to photograph and then released it, much to everyone's relief. It had me wondering for a while whether we had caught it or if it had caught us.

On our return, the plan had been to stroll into town and visit a few pubs. Truth is however, that we were tired, pretty dirty and we stank of fish. Best not to inflict ourselves on the good people of St Helier on a Friday night. So I was home at a reasonably time with a basket of good sized Bass and Bream. Both are pretty tasty fish so, in some way, I contributed to family well being even though I wasn't around to assist with the house move. Well, that's my view of it anyway.

Meanwhile, you notice I have made a few changes to this site, largely because I want it to become less of a blog and more of a resource for anyone seeking the freedom of  the sea for small expenditure. So, as well as this diary, there will be pages added, of  resources, hints, tips wrinkles and advice and I'll try to develop some kind of logic to what goes where so that it is easy to navigate. In particular, once the boat has been found, I'll list and comment on materials, tools, and gear used, to advise on their suitability and my experience of using them.

I'd also like to post up, (AND ACKNOWLEDGE) your own tips, tricks, and ideas - so come on, if you have discovered something interesting or useful, pass it on to the rest of us via this corner of the net! No reward I'm afraid - but the satisfaction of knowing that you've made a contribution to at the simple sailors out there.

Finally, John Almberg ( the unlikely boatbuilder) commented recently that he thought my list of shallow draft, bilge keel, gunter rigged GRP boat may actually contain no examples. Well, John, much to my surprise, (and yours I guess), I have found one boat at least that fits the bill. More about that later!

Seaward