Devotti Single Hander

Its a basic horsepower problem. The laser is a deceptively long boat, and a decent semi displacement hull form that is good across the speed range that it does. (0-15kts, weighted very heavily towards 3.5kts, i.e laser upwind speed)

The rig is agricultural, but reprasents an agricutural take on what was then state of the art.

Everything had been well thought out, tweaked and simplified so that it offered decent performance on all points of sail in all winds.

There are no real breakthroughs in hull design for this (laser) speed range, any speed improvements come incrementally from weight reduction due to material improvements, or slight tweaking of the hull form, or modest increases in the efficiencies of the hull and rig packages.

The MX Ray is short, has a p*ss poor rig (noodle bendy), questionable ergonomics etc. Remember that for an assym to work well (conventionals too complex for s/h) the boat has to be proper quick, i.e Musto/700 at least to be effective at sailing angles for best DDW VMG. RS200 being a case in point of the onverse. The MX Ray is a quick little boat with the kite up on a broad reach, but pretty painful at most of the other stuff.

So what was the post before you chopped it?

Amen, brother.

Its skilful, rewarding and dynamic. Most people's sailing highlight of the '96 games was real time downwind footage of a 3 way battle between ainslie, scheidt and blackburn in the lasers. 15kts breeze, nice chop.

A lot of people have a prejudice that its just sit in the middle of the boat and point at the leeward mark, and I think that these kinda people are those who want to be dragged downwind by a big kite. Each to their own but a large part of this type of boat's attraction is the technique and dynamism required in sailing them upwind or down. Pretty much an artform, very atheletic and great to watch when done well.

Speed apart, watching or sailing "high performance" boats seems a little bit mundane except when turning corners. Although I probably do it wrong..