New Name For The Aura

I can't be bothered to respond to personal comments in any meaningful way.

we've got half a dozen picos as club boats , was quite shocked to see them upside down in storage last winter , hulls severely distorted , huge hollows etc , I expect roto moulding has improved , otherwise I pity anyone who has bought one for other than training .

When new they were ok apart from plastic being a bit sparse in places .

Curiously old toppers (and I mean much older ) seem to fair better.

It also sounds like from discriptions I've heard about Feva's, quite hard to repair Roto-moulded boats, so at least in some ways the mirrors had major plus points as you could easily repair the wood panels. The mirrors were also starting to fade after 20-25 years of use, wonder if the same could be said about roto-moulded boats in half that time span.

Unfortunately irony is quite hard to do with just text.
It was also that I had to leave so was unable to comment any further.

Just as an aside have you actually sailed a Vago or any of the plastic boats other than Toppers and Picos?

My experience of 200s was that they are quite fragile. A glancing blow to the area just under the gunwhale caused several hundred pounds worth of repair. The same type of collision in a plastic boat wouldn't cause anything like the damage done here. Someone else had their 200 cleaned and polished and the person doing the work leant on the hull and caused a fairly large crack. RS did repair this for free, but it shouldn't really have happened in the first place. We also chipped ours on the stones on the beach and by hitting it with the launching trolley. I have only hit one other boat so bumper cars is a bit of a exaggeration.

The plastic boats are difficult to repair. Someone with a Vago was hit by the bow of a flying 15 in the classic T boning port starboard incident. The hole in the Vago was about a 18" across and a foot vertically, through both skins. They got a new hull from laser as it was uneconomic to repair.  A new hull was about £2000. It was repairable as the boat was sailed for 2-3 weeks with temporary repairs, but these weren't permanent or to a particularly high standard. I think the person at fault bought the hull as an insurance right off and had it fixed for messing about in. This is in contrast to a similar incident with a Merlin Rocket hit in the same way. The hole was more like about a 3 foot circle. Not quite sure of the cost of that but it was very expensive I know. For that sort of thing I think I would personally prefer a new hull to a major structural repair, even if it meant a slightly higher insurance premium.

I owned the 200 for about 18 months 2 years before buying the Vago and to be honest I much prefer the Vago to the 200. I hate hiking as a crew so that was a big plus from my point of view. Vagos are quite slow upwind, a well sailed 200 is probably faster, but that might be that I am not very good, but the Vago is much faster downwind. I think the 1000 PY is only if you are a top class sailer and still possibly a bit low. 1050 for the XD is much more like it as far as I am concerned. I will still not win any of the big pursuit races we have even at 1050. The type of people, myself included, who sail the Vago will probably never be able to sail it to it's full potential. I started too late and don't practice enough being the biggest problems.

Once I can helm and my crew trapeze (we have swapped when using the Vago as we each want to try what the other was doing) to a reasonable standard we will probably be moving back to the 4000 fulltime, except when we want to potter about the harbour or take out friends who don't sail as it is much more comfortable for that sort of thing.

I remember what it was like learning to sail in the 4000, we went swimming all the time. The Vago is much more forgiving and stable.

I can see nothing but good coming from the easy to sail, general maintenance free plastic boats, whether they are Laser, Topper or RS built. There is something quite intimidating in going straight to the performance/race boats of whatever category.

You do get a lot of performance from the Vago for the money. They do perform very well in high winds too. We have raced in average 25 knots with gusts of 35-40 and the boat performed very well. With only a couple of boats having any breakages and these were due to an easily fixable design problem with the bolts on the rudder stock. 

As I said before after looking at all the options available the Vago was the best choice for us for what we wanted. After nearly a year of ownership it still is. I am more than happy with it. I do prefer the 4000 though, but not with me as a helm currently.