So, we recently obtained a MacGregor of '79 or 80 vintage. the boat is in pretty good shape except for a hole in the starboard hull where the old owner ran it aground.

The boat is sitting in my dad's boat yard right now and he has his fiberglass guy working on it. the rudders should be repaired soon and the hull(s) are next.

he's torn between selling and keeping it. for the right price I know it will be gone, but if he does keep it, I was wondering if that mast system can be upgraded to rotate.

i'm sure it can be done custom but wondered if it was ever stock. the boat has the tall rig and has done 20+ but..... there is nothing wrong with a little more speed!

I was unaware that there even was a Stiletto 37. I thought they stopped at the 30.

Stiletto only made the 27 and a small # of 30s. Post these questions on the Stiletto Wild Jibe site, there are several very knowlegeable guys there who'll help you out. There's also a custom wing mast for sale on the classifieds there.
Where are you located?

dave

I need to correct myself, it's a MacGregor 36. I had Stiletto on the brain for some reason when I pounded out that post on my pda while driving home last night.

The boat is in Western KY on Ky Lake. I'll post some pictures later today.

There aren't that many 36s still afloat, and as far as I know, no current factory support. That rig was designed well before rotating rigs were as common as they are today. I doubt they ever a a factory rotating set up. And if you fabricate a rotating arrangement, the mast will need to be stayed differently(diamonds), and someone with experience with that mast and/or masts in general, would be important.

Dave

I always liked the mac36, if they only could have got a couple of double bunks in the sterns, it would have taken off.

Some of the stuff on this page may be of use;

http://www.f-boat.com/owners/index.html

Paul

I am interested in purchasing a Mac 36. if your dad is interested in selling it, please reply with a set of pictures and discription.

Les Weeks

Mary and I had one and loved it. Lots of speed and lots of fun. It had the same rating as the Hobie 18 at the time on DPN.
There was only one National Championship. We had three boats and with a great team aboard, Enrique Rodriguez, Larry Mondragon, et al we won every race with an older style boat that had only one daggerboard (a short one at that). The later models had two boards. (Note: MacGregor stopped making them and destroyed the molds -- this was his only multihull design that I have ever heard of. He is one hell of a great designer of monohulls, but he must have felt this was a Red R on his chest)
Usually raced in Biscayne Bay and my nemises was a Condor 40. They would stomp us upwind (my short single board being the culprit) and we would stomp them downwind. All very close racing.
Then I bought a nice deep daggerboard from an F40, and we won all points of sail.

On the rig, it is stayed from the stern on each side and consequently you could not have a fully battened mainsail. Well, you could if you used running backstays, but I felt that might be a bit too much trouble.
Besides, it was a masthead rig, so your predominant sail was the Genoa, not the main as in fractional sloops.

OK, say you did want to make the mast rotating. Why, the mast had no shape. To be effective you would need to replace the mast with a wing-shaped type as most beach cats have. In other words the major axis must be pretty long and minor axis pretty narrow. Otherwise, there would be no benefits. Rotating an almost square mast would do no good.

You probably have a rare Mac36 by the way. Most of them I have seen were converted to cruising boats, by building solid decks, adding dog houses, salons, etc. All of which makes them heavy and not very good sailing boats.

My other beef with the boat was the rudder system. Much would have preferred a kickup rudder system. I did touch bottom a couple of times with the rudder and bent the steering shaft. It was aluminum and bent back, but I am sure it weakend it tremendously.

At any rate, we had a lot of fun with it. By the way, it supposedly slept 8. HaHa! Sort of like a 4-man rubber boat. another HaHa! It had bunks forward and aft on each side, and were wider than a single bunk, but somewhat shy of a bed for two. Newlyweds would do fine.

Rick,

Wasn't the Venture Cat a "Mac" design?

Could be, but I don't think so. I was told the Mac36 was his only attempt, but I have been lied to before.
Rick

The Venture 15 was his first multihull design. There were two models, the early one was banana hulls like the Hobie, the second, more like the Prindle. Both were very inefficient to windward, camparatively heavy and slow, I sailed both styles. I also flew out to California in my Cessna 182 and visited Roger MacGregor in Newport Beach, CA and went for a ride on his tall rig 36 that won the Ensenada race one year. That was a very well balanced and fast boat with a 50' rotating mast and a battened main. He experimented with several rigs and settled on a more conventional design for sale to the masses. The stock boat had a 43' mast and conventional sloop sails. He felt the tall rig was going to get a lot of people in trouble. It was harder to right, and easier to capsize.

The first sets of production hulls on the 36 were heavy and had the single very heavy daggerboard in the port hull. The later hulls had lighter weight pivoting boards in each hull and the entire boat was much lighter. That boat had much better speed potential and better VMG to windward due to the 5 degree pivot to the boards than the early version. I have sailed both. I used to be a dealer for them and had a heavy one on loan, and a light one that we sold almost as soon as we got it in. The boards would pivot slightly to windward from the water pressure on them so the hulls would track more in line with the heading because the boards took the angle of attack for lift. The 36' Cat retailed for around $28K with sails, spinnaker gear, and trailer.

MacGregor built inexpensive boats, monohulls from 17-26', some were rather unorthodox designs, a couple of them hybrids - planing power/sail, but all designs that got a lot of people into sailing that would not have been able to afford a top line boat. Many later moved up to quality boats after they were hooked.

Roger was a very smart but shrewd businessman with some very innovative ideas. He was also ridiculed in "yachting circles" for building cheap or strange boats. He closed the 36' cat production to build his 65' ULDB monohull which also won a fair share of distance races. That one retailed for around $120k with sails, initially.

They used to have to restaff the facilities every so often after the INS visits. There were also lots of frequent re-hires. That was back in the mid 70s. They didn't like having their picture taken either.

Thanks for the history, Alec. Very interesting.