Have a look at this

Originally posted by Philsy I believe the Yanks have some quite different dinghies to us. Anyone know any more about that?

Yep, their equivalent of an RS400 is a 30foot leadmine...

I'd be wary of launching a decent boat which requires talent and athleticism to sail, to a nation which thinks the Sunfish is great high performance racing dinghy.

Originally posted by Olly4088 I cant belive that some copmpanies like RS and so on havent thought of it there would be a massive market for things like 200s,300s, 400s, 600s,700s, 800s over there

I can believe that they have thought that there wouldn't be a big market over there... Which is pretty much the same thing.

There's a belief that if a boat isn't so solidly built of think fibreglass that it doesn't break when college kids bounce it off the rocks all year it isn't strong enough. Given boats like that its little wonder they want to sail leadmines at the age of 20.

Give you an example, one of the top selling boats in the US is a boat called a Club 420. Its like an ordinary 420 except detuned with an untapered mast and even thicker glassfibre and no less than 50 yes fifty pounds more weight... It even comes with rubber gunwhales I think so they can bash into each other with less damage. There's I think a version they use for College sailing which has no trapeze or kite...

The guy that owns the conmpany that buildsa these things knows all about decent sailboats. He owns some great ones. He just can't persuade his customers to buy them...

I think a lot of it is in US college sailing. In Uni sailing in the UK if you break it you don't go sailing till you've fixed it. So you avoid breaking it if at all possible: end of story. I think in the US they have people who are paid to fix the boats, so the people who buy the boats are only interested in boats that don't break...

Come to think of ut, Laser should be in there with the 5 Tonner, the US is obviously its natural home...

Just thought, the sailors of that boat would be called Hooters. Can you imagine the logo on the sail?

           ( o )( o )

Originally posted by Jamie600 Just thought, the sailors of that boat would be called Hooters. Can you imagine the logo on the sail?            ( o )( o )

Good sponsorship opportunities ...