Nice new Laser for Christmas

When the ideal Women's weight is different to that of the men, then it is obvious that it simply reflects the sailors, and if you are too far off you will suffer at one end of the wind spectrum or the other.

I assume mast rake is the same. Europes (used to, at any rate) rake the masts more upright in a blow in order to get more mast bend before the boom hit the deck, and then rake it back so the mast still hit the deck in lighter stuff. If you use that logic, you need two Laser hulls or more with varying rakes for the conditions. And someone weighing a stone more would need different rakes again?

I have a feeling pretty much any boat with a mast pot is going to suffer from this - I dunno whether anyone has measured Lightning 368 mast rake - I'd take bets that they are as far out as Laser ones.

Not convinced that all Toppers are the same, either - if there is a company around who can f*** something like that up, it has to be Topper - I remember years ago when working in Wet & Windy that finding someone who could actually sail or had a clue what you were talking about when you rang them was impossible. Can't see that having got any better. They were very friendly and did try to help, I'll give then that.

Wet & Windy closed down a month or so back, so no, I guess not a lot changed!

Originally posted by JimC Originally posted by bustinben P.S. I know I've argued that the published radial "ideal weight" is utter b**locks, Curiously, in a class which is weight sensitive, when fleet racing the ideal weight to be is smack on the average for the fleet. This may not relate to the weight that's "ideal" to get the boat round a range of courses in the lowest average time. Very counter intuitive but you can do a paper experiment to demonstrate it.

Edited by bustinben - 07 Dec 14 at 7:32pm

Originally posted by Rupert When the ideal Women's weight is different to that of the men, then it is obvious that it simply reflects the sailors, and if you are too far off you will suffer at one end of the wind spectrum or the other. I assume mast rake is the same. Europes (used to, at any rate) rake the masts more upright in a blow in order to get more mast bend before the boom hit the deck, and then rake it back so the mast still hit the deck in lighter stuff. If you use that logic, you need two Laser hulls or more with varying rakes for the conditions. And someone weighing a stone more would need different rakes again? I have a feeling pretty much any boat with a mast pot is going to suffer from this - I dunno whether anyone has measured Lightning 368 mast rake - I'd take bets that they are as far out as Laser ones. Not convinced that all Toppers are the same, either - if there is a company around who can f*** something like that up, it has to be Topper - I remember years ago when working in Wet & Windy that finding someone who could actually sail or had a clue what you were talking about when you rang them was impossible. Can't see that having got any better. They were very friendly and did try to help, I'll give then that.

Originally posted by bustinben Originally posted by Chris 249 Originally posted by bustinben I think all this may be moot anyway in practice - how does LPE or Sailboats.co.uk know what the "optimum mast rake" is?   Reputational damage to the class aside that is.   And that notwithstanding the fact that any decent laser sailor knows that the "all boats are the same" thing is utter b**locks anyway. Since our Lasers come from a different builder I don't know whether the claim about your Lasers is correct, but where is the objective evidence that there is a discernible speed difference between Lasers today? In your earlier posts you have disputed claims by other people about Aussie boats being faster, you disputed the claims that the optimal weight range of Radials is narrow, and claimed that the sails were better than others reckon. To be honest IMHO you're right in all of those points, but is there any more or less evidence for the claim that there is significant variation between Lasers than there is for the claims you dispute? One can feel a difference between Lasers (or THINK one can feel a difference, which is quite a different matter) but finding hard evidence of an actual speed difference in current boats appears to be impossible, unless the boat is actually beaten up or broken.  Well, the physical differences are readily provable to anybody who cares to check.  I know that they're there because I've measured them myself.  I've got a table of rake measurements from a range of boats, and not only are no two the same, they're in fact all very different.  Anybody who is a member of a club with more than 1 laser can repeat my experiment  As to whether it actually makes a difference on the racecourse, that's much harder to prove conclusively. Sailing two boats with different rakes does feel different, but can you be sure that one is better than the other? What you *can* say on this topic if you understand how the laser rig works, is that if you have a mast that is raked 2 inches further back than other, then you have the same leech tension as the forward raked boat if it loosened the traveller or clew strap by the same amount. A bit of 2 boat tuning in hiking conditions up until you start de-powering significantly will quickly show you what happens if you do that (clue, it's not going to be very fun). That doesn't help you assess where the limits lie however.  I'm sure there's a point where going further forward will start to disadvantage you. P.S. I know I've argued that the published radial "ideal weight" is utter b**locks, but I'm not sure I've claimed that it has a wide range?