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.

Cheers Peaky, Can't believe i got done... b**tards

It really goes to show how good the Laser design actually was, that people are having trouble designing averagely easy boats to sail that will go faster, despite the Laser's mast and sail combo.