R Speculation

Any new design hoping to replace the Laser would need to be a much better boat for a similar price. £8K simply won't do it.

£5000 puts in firmly in the bracket of boats that are already out there, with the class structure and all that goes with it. I'd say a light and simple boat should be possible for £3000 - after all, if it is light and simple, the build time is quick and material cost low, unless you decide to go all carbon or something. No trailer, very simple trolley, rather than the £250 one that goes with a combi, all keeps the price down. But it really must be liftable by one person. So it would need to be pretty narrow, so lacking righting moment (no wings, they are heavy and a faff) so would need a light, efficient rig. 

You might get a CSM/Poly special for £3K, but nobody would buy it.

Originally posted by sandgrounder Hasn't this subject already been thrashed to death elsewhere on here....?

Well yes but this time it appears to be happening, but like buses you wait for ages and not just one but two come along together.

Hidden away in my last post was the question - just how much better than the existing boats does a new boat have to be to get itself established as a class, where you can get a race against a dozen of them at a club near you? Like you could with the Mirror, Enterprise, Cadet, Albacore and so on in he 50s. When the Laser came along it was cheap, simple, light and fast enough. Basically it was grp and the previous classes weren't - at least not originally. There had been a major technology shift. People who sailed expensive yachts at weekends would enjoy the simplicity of the Laser mid-week. Class fleets formed everywhere. Now, although it is possible to design a boat that is better than the Laser it will not be SO much better that fleets form spontaneously overnight so if you buy the new boat you are condemned to the traveller's circuit at best. An Australian contributor to this thread said more or less the same thing - yeah, you can build a better boat but can you build better racing? Not until someone comes up with something that can be made on a 3D printer for almost nothing, I would suggest. How many manufacturers' one designs have really taken the country by storm in the way that the plywood boats of the fifties did?