If noticed the 25's are on an angle, with the trailing edge down. Is that how your 25s were? The '73 Venture had the keel retracting fully into the hull like your 2-22. The '83 has an angled keel with most of the aft end hanging beneath the hull. I'm not sure when they changed to the angled design,...

Congrats on your new boat and welcome back to sailing! I'm no expert on the 2-22, but I've owned a '73 Venture 25 and an '83 Mac 25. Both those boats had a bare metal centerboard, and aside from a little rust, never had an issue because of it. Both were wicked fast for their size. I suspect that the...

That's one of the downsides to going out of business. It may not be technically public domain, but there's probably no corporate lawyer left on payroll to argue the point.

I am assuming when referenced here about an X or M youare referring to the short port and starboard stays on the mast that go from the cabin roof to the mast about 4 feet up? Primarily I believe these are used for steadying the mast while raising or lowering? Have I got this right? You are correct ...

Unless I'm missing something, I think you would have to remove, or at least lower the front end of the dodger, to step the mast.

Ironically enough, this afternoon I just bought a brand new Dometic pump out model to properly comply with our laws in this years Mad Men of Ontario Rendezvous, this August. http://i1121.photobucket.com/albums/l520/rottnest/Pump-out%20toilet/IMG_7515_zps575a61bc.jpg I already have the same PP as th...

I single launch my 25 all the time. If I can't float the boat off the trailer, I pay out about 6 feet of slack on the winch cable, tie the stern to the far end of the dock with an appropriate amount of slack and power brake at the end of the ramp to break the boat free. The winch line keeps the boat...

Hi Kirk, Your boat is one of the few Mac models I’ve never seen in person, but I hope that my Venture 25 and Mac 25 are similar enough for my advice to be helpful. Regarding the centerboard, I’ve found that the best inspection method short of pulling the pivot pin and dropping the board is to crawl ...

It's going to be a lot of work getting that old girl back up and running, but it's not a bad price for an intact project boat. If you have the time and energy, more power to you. The trailer may not be safe/suitable for long-range hauls, so factor that into your decision. As a previous poster noted,...

I've been using the same set of Bugbuster weighted screens ( http://www.sogeman.com/sogeman-products.html ) for 10 years on an Offshore 33, O'Day 22, and my current Mac 25. They keep out everything and don't require messing around with Velcro and glue. The hatch screen was a tad too small for the O'...

Congratulations on your purchase. Welcome to the world of classic Macs. I have a 2001 Mercury 6hp 4-stroke on my Mac 25, and it is all the motor I need for Lake Erie. For coastal sailing, with strong currents possible, I would prefer to have either an 8hp or a 9.9. Anything over 9.9 is overkill for ...

I believe that porta potties are completely illegal in Canada now, unless it is "permanently" mounted and fitted with an on-deck discharge hose. I can tell you for a fact that this is the case on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. So far as I know they are still legal everywhere in the US. I'...

I did a lot of research before settling on an Android Asus Transformer specifically because of it's onboard GPS capability. As far as I could find (as of two years ago...things may have changed), no Apple product has built-in GPS (they all get their location information from the cell tower signal). ...

Robert F. Burgess has a short chapter detailing a late-1980s cruise to Key Largo and the Marqueses Keys in his book "Handbook of Trailer Sailing". Stumbling across that book at the local library so many years ago is one of the things that inspired me to take up sailing. It's long out of pr...

I recently upgraded the original winch on my 25 to a heavy-duty ratchet winch similar to the one you're looking at and it works fine. I always used nylon straps before, but I needed to go with cable in order to feed it through a pulley to get it high enough on the tree to pull the boat in tight. Bei...