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Bring Back the Powersailer!!!
The powersailer deserves a second life: a big ocean-going yacht that sails when the wind blows and powers through the calms when it doesn't. Somewhere along the way the boating world decided you had to choose. You're a sailor or you're a launch person. Rag or stinkpot. The powersailer refused to pick a side, and for a while it was the best-selling cruising yacht on the planet.
Then it quietly disappeared from new-boat price lists. I think that was a mistake. I think the time is right to bring it back, and this time to build it big: 40 to 100 feet, ocean-rated, with no trailer in sight.
What a powersailer is, and where it went
A powersailer is a trailerable yacht with a full sailing rig and an outboard big enough to make the hull plane. That's different from a traditional motorsailer, which is a heavier displacement boat that motors at hull speed and sails a bit.
The idea went mainstream in 1995 with the MacGregor 26X. Around 5,000 were built by 2003, and its successor, the 26M, could take up to a 60hp outboard. Copycats followed, including Hunter's Edge 27 and the Imexus 28, which Trade-a-Boat tested sailing upwind in 15 knots, motoring at 20 and towing a surfer, all in a single day.
Then it stopped. Roger MacGregor retired and the Costa Mesa factory closed in 2013. His daughter's Tattoo Yachts carried the 26M moulds on as the Tattoo 26, but that run ended around 2015. Over five decades the factory built close to 40,000 boats. Today you can buy a used one, but almost nobody builds a new one. Those little trailerable boats proved the concept. The next step is to scale it up.
Why it's time for a comeback
Time is the one thing cruisers never have enough of. Most of us don't have a fortnight to wait for a breeze. A powersailer lets you make the weather window, keep to a crew change or a flight home, and stop losing days to a dying wind. Arriving when you said you would is what keeps partners and families aboard.
It's two boats for the price of one. Owning a yacht and a launch means two moorings, two sets of maintenance and two insurance bills. A powersailer covers both jobs: lazy sailing days, plus fishing trips, towing the kids on a biscuit, or racing a front home.
Shallow draft opens up the map. With a lifting keel, a 50 or 60 footer can tuck into lagoons, rivers and anchorages that deep-keel yachts can't reach. Drop the keel and you get proper windward performance offshore.
It keeps sailors sailing. Plenty of people give up sailing not because they stop loving it, but because they're tired of being stuck. Ageing crews, young kids and nervous partners all feel safer knowing there's a fast way home. A powersailer is often the boat that stops someone defecting to a launch altogether.
It's a gateway for powerboaters. The reverse is true too. Someone who bought it for the motor will hoist the main one calm afternoon, switch off, and hear the water for the first time. That's how you grow the sport.
The engineering has caught up. The old knock was that these boats sailed badly. Newer thinking fixes that. Swallow Yachts' Coast 250 moves the 70hp outboard into a well forward of the cockpit and adds trim tabs. That lets a proper sailing hull plane at 15 knots without dragging a fat transom under sail. Lighter carbon rigs, efficient four-strokes and electric outboards all push the concept further.
The big idea: a powersailer that crosses oceans
Here's where I want to push the concept further than MacGregor ever did. Picture a powersailer built not for the bay but for the ocean, somewhere between 40 and 100 feet long: a semi-displacement hull, a big modern rig, a lifting keel with real lead in it, water ballast tanks on top of that, and a bank of powerful outboards. Forget the trailer. This boat lives on a mooring and goes wherever the trade winds go.
The semi-displacement part matters. A pure planing hull pounds and slams offshore. A semi-displacement shape is easier on crew and gear in a seaway, it still sails properly, and it can step up past hull speed when you need to make a weather window or reach port before dark.
Size is what makes this work. A longer waterline means higher hull speed under sail, so a 60 footer covers big distances on wind alone. There's room for serious fuel tanks, water, a watermaker and solar. A big hull also has a far gentler motion in a seaway than a 26ft trailer-sailer, which matters for the crew and for the propellers.
Lead plus water: ballast you can switch on and off. The lead in the keel is permanent stability, always there and never pumped out. Water ballast is the adjustable layer on top. When you're sailing hard, fill the tanks and the boat stands up straighter and carries more sail. Offshore racers like the Vendée Globe boats do exactly this. When the wind dies and the engines go on, pump the tanks dry and the boat is suddenly tonnes lighter, so it motors faster on less fuel. When you're tied up or moving into shallow water, empty tanks also lift the boat higher.
That's the whole powersailer idea in one system. Heavy and stiff when sailing, light and quick when motoring. The MacGregor 26M already mixed a little fixed ballast with water. A 60 footer can do it properly, with tanks to windward for sailing and a centreline tank for the calms.
This is the best of both worlds. You get a sailing yacht's free, unlimited range from the wind, and a launch's ability to motor through a calm instead of sitting in it for days. No more choosing between the two. You just choose, hour by hour, whichever one the ocean is offering.
It's been done: a 14-year-old crossed the Atlantic
If you think a small trailerable boat with an outboard can't handle an ocean, meet Michael Perham. In late 2006, aged 14, he set off from Gibraltar alone in Cheeky Monkey, a Tide 28. That boat had a lifting keel, could be towed on the road, and was powered by an outboard. Six and a half weeks and 3,500 miles later, he arrived in Antigua in January 2007 as the youngest person to sail the Atlantic solo.
It wasn't a perfect trip. He stopped in the Canaries and Cape Verdes for repairs, and his father, sailing alongside in a second Tide 28, broke a rudder. That's fairly standard for an ocean crossing, though. The point is that a 28ft trailer-sailer with a lifting keel crossed an ocean. Yachting Monthly counts the Tide 28 among the power-sailers it has tested and rated it the best of the older generation under sail.
If a 28 footer can do it, a 50 or 60 footer designed for it from the start can do it far more comfortably. Pieces of that bigger boat already exist:
Shannon 53 HPS. Shannon founder Walter Schulz called it a Hybrid Power Sailer, to set it apart from old motorsailers that sailed poorly and lacked powerboat comforts. It paired roughly 150 diesel horsepower with a shoal-draft, beamy hull and a choice of sloop or ketch rig.
BD Yachts BD56. This 56ft Spanish sailboat is driven by two retractable outboards, controlled by joystick. Its hybrid concept won a 2009 Millennium Yacht Design Award.
Lion Yachts 60 flybridge. It's a powerboat, but it shows outboards work at this scale: four tilting Yamaha outboards, chosen by the owner for simpler maintenance, less corrosion and more room inside. The builder is eyeing a 24m version.
Engine on, engine off: how a passage would work
The rule is simple. No wind? Start the engine. Wind fills in? Kill it and sail. The sails do the heavy lifting across the ocean, and the motor's job is to get you through the gaps.
Those gaps are where traditional yachts lose days. Doldrums, the windless middle of a high-pressure system, the last 40 miles to port when the breeze dies at sunset. A conventional cruiser with a small diesel motors slowly or sits and slats. A powersailer gets through them at speed and is soon back in the wind.
Conditions | What you do |
|---|---|
Steady trade winds | Sail. Engine tilted clear of the water, zero fuel used. |
Flat calm | Motor at an efficient cruise until the breeze returns. |
Front or gale approaching | Motor hard to reach port or get clear before it arrives. |
Landfall or reef pass | Motor in, under control, regardless of wind direction. |
Heavy weather | Sail or heave to, like any yacht. Keep the engine as a backup. |
That's also why fuel range matters less than it sounds. You won't be motoring across an ocean. Carry enough for the calms and the landfall, and let the wind do the rest.
Safer and simpler: why an outboard beats an inboard offshore
Most bluewater sailors swear by inboard diesels, and diesels do last longer. But an outboard has real advantages that matter even more in the middle of an ocean.
No hole in the bottom for a shaft. An inboard needs a propeller shaft running through the hull, a stern gland, and an engine bay full of seawater plumbing. Each of those is a potential leak. An outboard that tilts up keeps every one of those failure points out of the boat.
A fouled prop is easy to clear. If you catch a net or a rope, you tilt the leg up and clear it from the deck. With an inboard, you're over the side with a knife, mid-ocean.
Multiple engines mean built-in redundancy. A big powersailer runs two, three or four outboards. If one fails, the others get you home, and the dead one can be lifted off and swapped in port without hauling the boat.
Maintenance is simpler and cheaper. Outboards are serviced by thousands of dealers worldwide, and the whole unit can come off the boat and go to a workshop.
Zero drag under sail. Tilt it clear and there's no fixed propeller hanging in the water, the way a shaft drive has.
No smelly engine bay. No diesel stink below decks, no heat, and more space for living and stores.
The engines themselves are getting better too. Modern four-strokes are frugal at low revs, and diesel outboards from makers like Cox Powertrain are rated to last up to three times as long as petrol, with longer service intervals. At 300hp and about 375kg each, a pair of them could push a 50 to 70ft semi-displacement powersailer well past hull speed, running on the same diesel every fuel dock in the world sells.
Beating cavitation: keep the prop in the water
The classic complaint about outboards offshore is that the propeller lifts out of the water in a swell. The stern rises, the prop sucks air, the engine screams, and you lose drive just when you need it. Strictly, that's ventilation rather than cavitation, but sailors call it cavitation, and it's a real problem on transom-hung outboards. It's also a solvable one.
Mount it lower. An adjustable or sliding bracket lets you drop the outboard deeper when the sea gets up, then raise it clear for sailing. Experienced sailors who convert to outboards push for the 25-inch extra-long shaft for exactly this reason.
Move it forward into a well. A well near the middle of the boat sits where the hull pitches least, so the prop stays buried. That's the trick behind the Coast 250, which puts a 70hp outboard just behind the keel and still planes at 15 knots. Owners of well-mounted outboards report the prop staying in the water even when ship wakes hit the stern.
Use a high-thrust prop. A larger, lower-pitch "sail-pro" style propeller grips the water better at displacement speeds and in waves.
Add trim tabs. Tabs keep the stern from squatting and the bow from rearing up, so the hull runs level and the prop stays deep.
Size helps too. A 60ft hull pitches far less than a 26 footer, so the props stay buried more of the time. Put it all together, with deep-mounted outboards in mid-boat wells on a big, level-running hull, and most of the cavitation problem goes away.
Answering the critics
"They're a compromise that does neither job well." Fair, for the first generation. Wide transoms and heavy outboards made them sluggish under sail, and even keen reviewers said so. But that's an argument for better design, not for giving up. The Coast 250 shows a powersailer can sail like a real yacht.
"A lifting keel can't be trusted offshore." Plenty of serious bluewater yachts already use lifting keels. Engineered and surveyed properly, a lifting keel with a lead bulb gives you deep-draft stiffness offshore and shallow-draft freedom at anchor. Add water ballast and you get extra stiffness on demand, without carrying the weight when you're motoring.
"A big outboard burns fuel." Only when you open it up. Most of the time you're sailing, and the throttle is there for when you need it. Smaller engine options and electric drives also suit owners who mostly want to potter.
"Nobody puts outboards on a big yacht." They already do. BD Yachts' 56ft sailboat runs two, and Lion Yachts' 60ft flybridge runs four. Big outboards now reach 300hp in diesel and over 400hp in petrol. The idea scales; it just needs a yard willing to combine it with a serious sailing rig.
"Outboards aren't tough enough for an ocean." Old two-strokes clamped to a pushpit bracket weren't. A purpose-built well, a modern four-stroke or diesel outboard, and two or more engines for redundancy make a different setup entirely. You also have something an inboard owner doesn't: if the motor dies, you were going to sail anyway.
"Today's powersailers are only rated for coastal waters." True. The Coast 250 is RCD category C, which means inshore. That's exactly the gap I'm asking someone to fill. Build the hull, rig and keel to category A, the ocean standard, and keep the powersailer recipe. At 40 to 100 feet, building to category A is routine work for any serious yard.
Bring it back
The powersailer sold in the tens of thousands because it matched how real people actually go boating: short on time, mixed crews, changeable weather. None of that has changed. What has changed is that we now know how to build one that sails properly.
So here's my plea to builders: give us a modern, affordable powersailer. Make it 40 to 100 feet and ocean-rated, with a real sailing rig and enough outboard power to run well past hull speed, for those of us who dream of trade winds but refuse to sit becalmed. And to sailors who sneer at them: go for a ride on a calm Sunday afternoon, when everyone else is waiting for wind. You might just change your mind.
Let's build it together
I'm not just writing about this boat. I'm designing one. It's a 40 to 100ft ocean powersailer with a lead-and-water ballast system, serious outboard power and some genuinely cool features I can't wait to share.
If you're a yacht designer, a naval architect or a boatbuilder who's excited by this idea, I'd love to talk. If you're an investor or someone with the means to make a boat like this real, I'd really love to talk. Get in touch with me :)