Ovington thingy.....

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that Lasers are good value, or that spares are cheap. But the price of a new, complete, Laser is less than a Solo or 300, both of which have a similar target crew weight. The 300 may (or may not) be better value, but ultimately a lot of people will find it easier to spend £4500 on a new toy than £8000, irresepective of residual values, open circuits, speed, comfort, harkenicity, etc.

Originally posted by Ruscoe £4500 buys you a Laser 'Race' Spec (whatever that is) which i actually think is pretty good value.  for the same money you can only just buy a 10 year old winder Solo or a 10 year old RS300.  So i actually agree with you around the value when it comes to a new boat.  I have a mate that spent the best part of £9000 on a Solo, you could have two Lasers for that!!!!  The Cost of the spares are just not inline with the price of a new boat.  A new Laser Sail represents 10% of the boats retail price!

So that suggests a £9k solo will drop to £4.5k over ten years.
That seems very good value. How will the Laser depreciate?
Not worlds apart, really.
But the value in a boat is (mostly) the races you can take part in, not the lump of plastic.

At least Peaky and Ruscoe understand where I was coming from there. The laser suffers from overpriced rubbish spares (in my opinion) but the basic boat is relatively cheap to get you going. How many countries in the world have people with the necessary means to go out and buy the local equivalent of a solo or a Phantom or even a 300?
There are also thousands of second hand lasers for them to get started with while us decedent western Europeans splash needless amounts of cash on new ones.
Assuming for a strange moment that I had shed a load of weight and was looking into getting a boat with plenty of fun for peanuts then I would get a laser, end of story. That is why they are still succeeding as a class because they are affordable. Not everyone can afford new but they still want a fun sail.

Originally posted by pondmonkey   If I'd bought a D-One, then despite wanting a custom colour like I've got, I'd have had no choice but to really go for a white one... even then the same ones are still for sale on Apollo Duck despite their conservative appearance.

yep- it was a bit cheeky, hence my response re the apolloduck D1s.  Yep- they're over-priced imo, but probably reflect what the owners originally paid for them when the FX was scary.  And no, I wouldn't buy one when I could get a decent deal from Suntouched for not much more and have it specced to my own liking.  (Frankly those wing bags seem a pointless 'luxury' to me... I'd rather put the money towards another kite - one for trashing, one for racing... buying from Suntouched would give that flexibility)