Although it seems painfully slow coming, massive improvements have been made to the boat over the years.

I wait with interest to see if the composite mast will have a tighter spec. than the ally and end up being no more expensive.

If the new top is successful then surely a Radial bottom section will be in the pipeline.

Laser: brilliant fun my second boat and it taught me loads about boat handling especially as I was then sailing on the sea out of a very tight and fast running harbour mouth. I think it cost me £300 in the 90s for a 47k number. Bit of glass around the mast pot through a 6" hatch and job was a good un, replica sail after a year or two and I was cooking. Given the rep sail I suppose any question of the repair hatch and another one next to the CB slot with a bag for spare string, hat and Mars bar putting it out of class is irrelevant.

Really though, I never aspired to a new one, for the (to my mind) basics construction materials, nothing special fit out and well reported failures the new price seemed insane.

That's my love hate relationship with Lasers. Fantastic sailing experience with the boat but a fun boat that takes itself too seriously and costs too much.   

£500 is the rumoured price from those in the know. the Aussies are flogging it at $850 (AUD) so near 3x that of the ali section.

I happen to know that because of the huge volumes of parts they are buying they get them very cheap. The example I was given was a toe strap, they were paying pennies for them, literally pennies. I can't remember the exact figure but it was something like 64p a unit. They retail for something in the region of £50, without looking. Some people look at that and say "how dare they!?" but most see the complete boat price and think "seems reasonable" and pay out. 

It's all very good poking fun at it but in reality you can't buy it cheaper, so in most cases you're better off just sucking it up and buying it. Most of us are sitting here moaning about stuff like this but working for companies that do at least try and make a profit. That's all they are doing is making a business work and if that means selling a mast for more than we might like to pay for it then good for them, so long as it isn't so expensive that people refuse to. The right price for any given part or boat is as much as you can possibly get away with, from a business point of view. If that means you don't make a profit then it's probably that its a bad product or your sales team need a good kicking, if it makes huge profits then who are we to complain, we bought it!

The whole sport should be looking over its shoulder, because if one of the most important classes in the world is damaged by those who carp about it then the whole sport will be seriously harmed.

The Laser has GAINED market share compared to most of the classes that were around when it was at its peak. The Laser is not the problem with dinghy sailing - it's the other classes that have suffered the big drop in numbers. Why attack one of the few long term success stories?

There are also a lot of fables about Laser kit. My brother was top 25 in the open standard worlds, for example, and he had one old borrowed sail and one new sail in his entire Laser career. We've had people say that Tom Slingsby, for example, would go into the factory and weigh dozens of masts before selecting them. Tom (who I knew as a sub-junior) has told me to my face that's not true, and that he is not allowed in the factory. My former PhD supervisor was the chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Sport and in charge of the study of the bend characteristics of Laser masts, and he says that the study revealed no surprise at all. Stiffness is proportional to spar weight and the differences (in our sticks, anyway) is negligible. Krystal Weir, former world champ and another of our Olympic Laser reps, didn't have that many sails and like Tom or Michael Blackburn (world standard and Radial champ and Olympic medallist), she was not very gear conscious. Both Tom and Krystal have the attitude that it's silly to need special gear when you have to use supplied kit for the major regatta. Learning to adapt to the minor gear differences you may meet is a skill that is needed for success.

The Laser as launched was developed quite a long way from the initial beach boat concept, by the way. At the time there were several vast multi-national conglomerates operating in the beach boat market in the USA, including some of the world's biggest companies. The Laser was developed into a serious but simple racing boat before the product was launched, because the backers did not have the cash to take on car and missile manufacturers in the beachboat market.

The top laser guys don't need to buys new sail every year 'cos, as Chris points out, they get one supplied at every regatta 

I don't think the Laser is a bad boat, but neither is it a great boat. It has a number of shortcomings that make it quite unpleasant for me to sail (I have owned one and sailed several over the years) so I bought something else. It has been demonstrated that when a true one design allows improvements to hull construction and layout (Enterprise and Blaze are the two I have a particular interest in) without reducing weight or changing the hull shape, the new hulls, which may be nicer to sail, are not faster than a well maintained older boat. Laser could make the hulls more durable and introduce a deck layout that was 'shortaRSe friendly (something like a bigger Byte maybe) without making those boats faster than a Standard. They could also introduce a new rig (which probably would make the boat faster but would be a different class in the way that Radial is) which might rejuvenate the boats appeal to younger sailors as well as making it pleasanter to sail. I can't see how that would be bad for the class or the manufacturer, or the sailing public.......

I would imagine most 'new for old' insurance people might be open to the idea of the claimant paying the top up for a composite section when their top mast breaks.

The stuff coming out the class/builder categorically states that the new top section has the same bend characteristics as the current section.... (just like the new sail trims identically to the old sail.....)

Brings a whole new meaning to the expression "one design sailors"!

Been a weak point for a number of years. Most insurers won't cover mast pot failures on boats older than 100,000 (might even be higher than that now).

Time will tell, pots usually rip out before a top section goes if they are going to go and usually as a result of poor boat maintenance.

they have never said that for sails  , except   the right is reserved  to decide that a repaired sail is substantially modified ... 

a few sailmakers dow n the years have done a good trade in buying  the scrap sails  from insurers and  repairing those  which are  easily repaired without a great deal of replacement material... 

Oh yes, there certainly are some sailors who are meticulous about their Lasers. It's just that the claims that you "need" new kit all the time are incorrect. It's probably a bit like the claims that in development classes you need a new boat every year or two - some of the top people get new gear regularly but it's not actually vital.

tht said any  wet layup  boat  will have variation in  weight  and balance ... 

but  not as much as other fibreglass  mouldings / modules in other uses where there was little thought or concenr  paid to  volumes  of materials used  (  sprayed  chopped  roving  + resin guns anyone )

Standard practice to keep the single rivet in compression although other thinking was that you should have it at the side.

I believe a design for a new collar that would achieve this was sent to ILCA and rejected.

It wouldn't have resolved the bending issue though.