Demise of the Laser 4000

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

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

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.

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...

Returning to the Alto earlier discussion, I really enjoyed that period of my sailing, not many other boats you can take a raw beginner out and get him/her to the front of the fleet. It hasn't completely failed, it's still out there, people buying and selling them, doing quite well on round island events etc despite having a good PYAG caning early on. (If you want to stop new boats failing this anachronism has to go, along with its class riven prejudices).

It's not perfect, they never seemed to have gotten the kite delivery system perfect and it's still a none wash through self baler, but as a fast man wife, light heavyweight, combo it certainly rivals the RS400, I'd buy another if a potential crew ever came onto my horizon.

I'd love to have been able to race it along with others to test the efficiency of the swinging pole and soaking low as against high and fast. At best it was a get out of jail card for the last bit of a long reach sailed perhaps too high and without wanting to go for another gybe.

I'm trying to wrestle the swinging system off my old V2 and give it a go on the Farr, reckon it would be excellent.

Edited by iGRF - 08 Jul 20 at 3:12pm