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| Laser 28 - Excellent example of this great design Hamble le rice |
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| Rossiter Pintail Mortagne sur Gironde, near Bordeaux |
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| Laser 140101 Tynemouth |
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If only? |
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DiscoBall 
Far too distracted from work 
Joined: 03 Jan 05 Online Status: Offline Posts: 305 |
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 Topic: If only?Posted: 09 Jan 05 at 9:00pm |
Actually if you watch the coverage of the olympics you'll see that ainslie (back in the day...) sceidt etc. sail the boat with a continuous small amount of heel. One reason is that your backside drags in the water otherwise! The other reason - that I didn't realise 'til I read Jon Emmets article about the radials adoption as an olympic class in Seahorse - is that if you sail it bolt upright the plate waggles around in the case which is slow.... Another great design feature...  The thing about the attitude in the fleet is very obvious in handicap racing where the top few laser guys in any fleet will be pretty normal but the rest will be shouty halfwits... At salcombe last year we led the 12 fleet round for absolutely ages, having our best race ever. Then with perhaps half a mile of the course left we encountered a lone laser sailor, well off the back of his own fleet. We kept going high to pass him well clear but he just kept staring over his shoulder and luffing up to our line until he was under our lee bow pinching madly. Suffice to say it dropped us out of 1st and a few choice phrases were directed in his direction...  T  |
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redback
Really should get out more 
Joined: 16 Mar 04 Location: Tunbridge Wells Online Status: Offline Posts: 1502 |
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Posted: 07 Jan 05 at 6:33pm |
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I enjoyed my Laser racing and learnt a lot. If only I'd switched the boat I now sail my knees wouldn't be so bad. I don't know if others have noticed, but if you relax for a moment in a Laser - to say only 95% effort - the boat slows to about 80%. My current boat slows to about 90% when I switch to 95%, it would give me more time the think if I wasn't going about twice as fast anyway.
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Chris 249
Really should get out more
Joined: 10 May 04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2041 |
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Posted: 17 Dec 04 at 8:41pm |
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Sure, it's a good boat that has done an enormous amount for the sport.
If the sport promoted itself as being more about Lasers etc than about
super maxis etc, the sport would probably still be as big as it used to
be.
But the Laser sailors I know recognise that the boat has a heavy helm. The credentials include; 3rd in the Open worlds; first in the Youth Worlds; 27th or so in Open Worlds at 19 years of age (just behind Ed Baird etc); winning a District Open title at 18, ahead of that season's World Champ and the guy who was 3rd; two Seconds in Masters worlds; down to winning the Radial district (Open and Masters) against the three-time world Masters champ and the guy who was 4th in the Radial worlds (a couple of places behind Ben Ainslie); etc etc etc etc. So the Laser sailors I know aren't exactly slow. We ARE sailing the boat well (even the slowest are Masters worlds runners-up, that's not exactly dog slow), but it's still heavy on the helm compared to many other classes. As Blobby pointed out, I was wrong in saying changing the rake would reduce the helm, it would just hide it. I agree with Fizzi about the way the boats last. I'm just getting back into the class in a casual way, and I've picked up a 1977/78 boat which still feels fine. Not as stiff as my old racing boat, but with training the old boat would take me back to the top 10 in Australian Radials as far as I can see. The sails don't last too well, but for one that's cause Aussie LAser sailors treat them terribly (letting them flog for ages) and secondly at least a proportion of the price goes to promoting the class. One of the reasons I never returned to the class seriously was the attitude at championship level. Not so much at the front, where the racing was tough but clean, but when you had a bad race and fell into the pack it was pretty ugly. And down here, the social aspect has really deteriorated outside club level. We go to mixed-fleet regattas and sometimes not a single Laser sailor will turn up to club functions. |
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fizzicist
Far too distracted from work
Joined: 06 Aug 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 305 |
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Posted: 17 Dec 04 at 4:41pm |
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The Laser is a fantastic boat. sl*gging off aspects of its design seems to have become a sport in itself. The mainsheet round the transom is merely a nuance that you soon overcome by learning to pull the loose main through the blocks as you tack/gybe. Which any good sailor will be doing on a gybe anyway, in order to control when the sail comes over. The weatherhelm soon disappears if you sail the thing completely flat. Which you should do anyway if you want to be quick. As for longevity, well I'm 14stone and sailed one laser for 10 years. I broke one mast, wore out two sails and had a scuffed & chipped daggerboard. My boat took a lot of hammer and the only damage was from the trailer. Yet I was still able to run at the front of the fleet at club events and finish in the top 10 at the open meeting I did last year. I sold the boat 6 months ago, but every time I get in a Laser I am astounded by just how lively it is. The downside to the Laser was how many miserable buggers sailed it who spent the entire time on the water shouting at everyone else. Since moving onto an RS300, I've been amazed how relaxed other competitors are. Perhaps it's because the challenge of the boat itself takes up more mental capacity. Either way the Laser is a great boat and has done an immense amount to popularise the sport. |
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Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and
oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer. |
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James Bell
Posting king 
Joined: 17 Mar 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 115 |
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Posted: 17 Dec 04 at 1:09pm |
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>I remember thinking it was ridiculously fast when it came out, since I was sailing a 2 man spinnaker boat, reckoned to be "high performance" which had a very similar handicap |
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redback
Really should get out more
Joined: 16 Mar 04 Location: Tunbridge Wells Online Status: Offline Posts: 1502 |
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Posted: 17 Dec 04 at 12:46pm |
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The Laser has its place, it's a wonderful boat for learning close tactics and windshifts. I remember thinking it was ridiculously fast when it came out, since I was sailing a 2 man spinnaker boat, reckoned to be "high performance" which had a very similar handicap. I've had 2 and won many club trophies in both (and the odd open) but these days I find it so hard work for so little speed. These days I sail a boat which is considerably faster but the Laser taught me a lot. If only I could sail something faster still but that would require more practice than one day a week provides. |
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Stefan Lloyd
Really should get out more
Joined: 03 Aug 04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1599 |
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Posted: 17 Dec 04 at 9:58am |
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Yes, although it depends on the way the class is run to some extent. I helped run a one-design class association for several years. We did have a process to evolve the rules to slowly improve the boat. But to change anything required 3-way approval - class association members, the manufacturer and the RYA (who administered the rules). That certainly reduced the rate of change. For manufacturers' one-designs, there is often not much profit on the original sale. They make their money on sails and other spares (just like a lot of other consumer goods). That means that an increase in the lifetime of sails is unlikely to be in their interests. |
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Granite
Far too distracted from work
Joined: 12 May 04 Location: Scotland Online Status: Offline Posts: 476 |
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Posted: 17 Dec 04 at 9:22am |
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If only will always be the problem for strict one desings as the designing is done at the start in a short period of time by profesionals (who have to be paid) then everything is fixed by the rules. Lessens that are learned by sailing the boat are not allowed to be adopted, just look at the time it took for the laser to get rid of the nitting and alow extra blocks in the sail controls! If a bit of development were allowed the sails would last more than a couple of weeks and the hulls would last more than 6 months.
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Blobby
Really should get out more
Joined: 07 May 04 Location: Australia Online Status: Offline Posts: 779 |
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Posted: 17 Dec 04 at 1:04am |
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The weather helm would still be there - you would just be able to hold the tiller without being a gorilla...
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Chris 249
Really should get out more
Joined: 10 May 04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2041 |
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Posted: 16 Dec 04 at 10:13pm |
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Sorry, the Laser WAS developed a lot after the "back of the envelope"
sketch (which was actually on a yellow legal pad that still hangs above
Bruce Kirby's computer).
 The first design had a centreboard not a dagger; more rudder rake; a mainsheet that went to a take-off on top of the rudder; and a bracket that held the boom at a rigid angle onto the mast, rather than a vang. But as Kirby says, the original sketch looks a lot like the boat that was built. The reaction that the Kirby/Bruce/Fogh team got from hot sailors when they first showed them the boat encouraged them to develop it a bit more towards the racing side of the equation. Ian Bruce reckoned the rudder blade was raked too much, so he made it more vertical; that's why the bottom of the rudder isn't horizontal. I don't know when the other gear went on, but by the time the first boat sailed it had a dagger, conventional vang and gooseneck and the rope traveller IIRC. Having said all that, I've always had a fantasy of doing a carbon Laser, and turning up to a race with it. You'd just have to make sure that no-one realised it was carbon and disqualified you for life before you revealed the joke! I wouldn't mind having a Laser with no corners on the transom, a cored hull (same weight but better lasting) and more durable spars. But the best change, AFAIK, would be to just hang the existing rudder more vertically to get rid of that *&^%$#@ weather helm!  |
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