Demise of the Laser 4000

But if you accept that no-one should actually be running square, then half the commonly made arguments for a pole kite disappear. There is of course no reason why a sprit kite can't be cut big full and baggy, indeed where windward/leewards are the course of choice they can be. Coupled to that is the undeniable fact that you can run a much larger sprit kite and much longer effective pole length for the same level of handling difficulty.

Then there's also the other reason why I abandoned the pole kite on my Cherub after a season. I simply got fed up with losing two places on every gybe mark...

In this context, I don’t think running square literally means at 180 to the wind, it means whether the apparent wind is aft (and therefore less than the true wind) or forward of the beam (in which case it is stronger than the true wind). If your boat has decent speed potential hotting up and sailing the extra distance is worth it. If the boat is speed limited it isn’t. The 470 doesn’t run at 180 but the apparent wind is still well aft of the beam on its best downwind VMG, therefore it’s doesn’t need a low drag (asymmetric) sail.

Doesn't really muddy the waters. Lasers sailing by the lee is just another demonstration that sailing dead downwind is slow.

Edited by JimC - 08 Jul 20 at 8:15am

Symmetric downwind on the sea?

It also rather depends what the following waves are doing, they are rarely dead square and they vary in size. It would be a dull old day if sailing the straight line was quicker. Just as well the uninteresting dead run that some refer to when extolling the tactical interest of the assy doesn't happen that often, not on the sea anyway.



Edited by Sussex Lad - 08 Jul 20 at 6:52am

Thing is though all the polars I've seen suggest that actually sailing at 90 degrees is pretty much always slow. The distinction to my mind is between sailing hot and "soaking" deep. Deep may be very deep on some boats. An interesting test to try if you think you are running square is to flip the boom across. If you are genuinely running dead down there will be no difference which gybe you are on, but I've found on any given course there'll be a good gybe and a bad one, which suggests I at least naturally sail a bit off a dead run.