Dinghy hull weights

Still leaves a couple of questions though. I know the minimum weight is 72kgs but what is standard weight? and are the modern ones made to the same weight tolerance as thew 10yr old ones or are the built closer to 72kgs now?

Apologies for late response ... 'standard' and minimum weight for the Blaze are the same thing – and it is 72kg.  It includes full wing system, centreboard, all fittings and lines but excludes rig and rudder assembly.  After the switch to epoxy many years ago it became easy enough to build all boats a few kg below 72kg.  They were/are all weighed after fit-out and correctors are then added - so all are on the nail at 72kg.   This means that IF a hull has a major smash the hull can be easily repaired and if more ‘structure’ is involved in any repair the additional weight can be offset by adjustment to the correctors (btw these are generally ‘bonded’ into the hull so it becomes more difficult to ‘forget’ them on a day to day basis - if you get my drift  ).   The ‘spread’ of weights amongst the polyester boats has probably widened over the years for the reasons already discussed but the best are still v.close to 72kg and remain highly competitive against the later boats.  We weighed all entrants boats at one National Championships ( a right pain for all concerned of course but there was no wind that day!) and all epoxy boats were very very close together at 72kg.  Polyester ones had a much wider spread which we suspect was as much to do with moisture uptake over the intervening years as it was the original build tolerances.  Would ‘we’ build any new boat in polyester today ourselves – No.   Vinyl-ester and/or epoxy are worth the price differential imo.

Could we have reduced the class minimum weight ?  - Very probably but this would have made the early polyester boats at a disadvantage and produced in effect a ‘two-class’ boat.   Usefully at this weight  the Blazes is not particularly fragile (though some owners do try to prove otherwise and drive them extremely hard in just about any conditions – the boats are simply superb fun in F4+) …. but if owners do have a problem the hull can still be easily enough sorted.