'Fake/Training' Laser Sails

Rick - if its of any help at this late stage, every club I've been a member of has allowed non official Laser sails to be used and no-one has ever complained about it. There's no discernable advantage to using them other than the £470-odd official Laser sail can be safely tucked away for big events and thus it lasts longer.

I sailed 144921 for 10 years and found that the first two-three races with a new sail were crap because it was so creased from the packaging then it was good for about 6-7 months, after that it was okay for club racing for about 2-3 years depending how seriously you were taking it.

I've always believed the difference between a 'used' sail (i.e. no longer crinkly but not stretched to hell) and a new one is about 5%. I only used a new one for big events or when I felt I could not make up that 5% performance differential by sailing better.

But then I am a northerner and thus I'm a tight fisted so and so!

As for the Laser argument - I had ten years of fun in a Laser, it wasn't without it's faults but in ten years of sailing in any conditions I could find I broke one top section, one toe strap, three travellers (i.e. wore out the rope), scrapped one gorilla tiller because it was crap and thats it. I bought the boat for £1600, got ten seasons out of it, bought one new Laser sail (£400ish), spent £150 on rope & other go faster bits and the worst damage to the hull was when the road trailer damaged the gelcoat (fixed it for a fiver...) I sold the boat for £1200. Before I sold it, I was still winning club races (fleet and handicap) regularly and finished in the top 40% of a Laser open fleet.

Whilst my RS300 knocks it into a cocked hat but the Laser cost me £950 in depreciation and new bits (including a sail) to run it competitively for ten years. I've already spent that and more on a new RS300 sail, carbon blocks, several meters of posh string and will soon be shelling out £150 for a new boom.

The reason the laser has sold 180,000+ boats is because the boat is fundementally right - it's simple, doesn't break, lasts ages and can be sailed on a tiny budget whilst providing great fun. Yes it's uncomfortable, the sails are overpriced crap etc but these are only problems if you're doing the national circuit week in week out. The Laser has done more for the popularity of dinghy sailing than any other class IMHO and it's wrong that we spend our time sl*gging off a boat, that lets face it, without which most modern single handers wouldn't exist because there simply wouldn't be a market. How many of you never sailed a laser? Or more to the point how many of you sailed a Laser early on in your sailing career and didn't think 'wow, this is lively/fun!'?

Think of it as the sailing equivalent of a Golf GTi - there's more exciting things out there, but it's always a giggle when the conditions are right!

Apologies for the long winded rant, but there's too much 'my boat is better than yours' and it detracts from a great sport.

To me it seems very strange to compare the life of a Mylar sail to a dracron one. Dacron is ment to be stretching so you can achieve a wide variety of sail shapes ...  Not possible with Mylar. However because it stretchs sails due tend to get stretched and wear out quicker... No surprise there!!!

Do you think a large class association like the Laser is an advantage or disadvantage?

I've helped run a SMOD class association. Without money from the manufacturer, we couldn't have run the class the way our members wanted it run, which was basically a professionally run association without all that time-consuming volunteering-to-help stuff that nobody was prepared to do. Without royalties from sails and other spares, the manufacturer wouldn't have had the money to pay us. That's the way SMODs work. If you don't like it, don't sail a SMOD class. It isn't compulsory.

Chris 249 - Point taken - Without reservation I withdraw the comment "painfully slow and outdated" with reference to the Laser and am happy to replace it with "in my opinion painfully slow and outdated" 

It's a flippant responce of course and meant in good humour and/but this does not mean that the boat does not enjoy great racing - as in my time I did within the class many years ago.  However the key point of this discussion was not about the virtues of a particular boat - it was about the suitability of 'alternative' or 'training' sails in the situation where the average punter feels that possibly he is paying a whopping great premium for 'original' equipment without any obvious additional benefit.  I don't think there is any basic disagreement - we both appear to support the use of alternative sails which are available at very much more reasonable prices than the original ones.

I admire anyone who can make any boat really fly at Steve's pace but do find it hard to regard the Laser as anything but average in terms of performance for the grunt required.  But before passions are raised further I will also point out that the Laser characteristics are exactly what many MANY people value and seek out. It would indeed be boring a boring world if everybody drove the same car, supported the same team or ... were 'forced' to buy the same over priced sails or heaven forbid even had to race the same boat.  

Good luck with your own racing this season.

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