Can anyone tell me if the colour of a hull bears any relationship to its age?

Looking for my 400 now and I have found that there are quiet a few different hull colours and being just a tad girlie i would love a lilac/purplish one! though most in my sail number and price range are grey,  grey is good but it got me thinking that maybe certain years have certain coloured hulls. Is this so?

RS do seem to make boats in colour batches, so if you know the class you could probably guess the age from the colour. In the 400's there's a pinky coloured one at Portchester thats around 550 number, and the newer ones seem to be generally grey. When they were selling most boats, there was the most variety of colours.

Of course the best way of telling the age is by the sail number....lol

When I went to Plas Menai a few years ago they has a lovely pink RS400 that we got dropped in to because we broke the manly blue one!

As for things like Lasers etc.. they all seem to come in a slightly off white (not sure how they describe the Grey these days).

Most other boats tend to be white (sorry most other plastic boats) with the exception of the classes which are still dominated by wooden hulls when you do get a profusion of colours...

Paul

oooooh i would love a pink one!   

Originally posted by Garry Not wanting to be a wet blanket but: if you're OCS and know and don't go back/retire that's an infringement of rule 2 or if the PRO can't identify the boats over there should be a general recall - even if its just one boat!

Well yes but in a big fleet in the middle of the line it is very often difficult to know if you are OCS or not, and anybody who has raced a while will have come across committees who will let a start go when maybe they shouldn't have.

Garry, you should see what goes on in the European Olympic circuit events. It can be disgusting, some of the rule abuse. Club racing observes impeccible levels of sportsmanship in comparison.

Many "club" sailors are often unaware they have broken rules due to a lower level of knowledge, wheras the professional sailors know full well when they are cheating, but usually just decide whether or not to do turns in a "risk management" style. I.e. they will estimate the likelyhood of being protested for a particular incident, before deciding whether or not to take a penalty. (usually not). The top guys will quite often do their turns, as they have more to lose, but I found the levels of cheating in mid-fleet to be astonishing in the Olympic events I did, even down to the level of near-fist-fights at leeward marks and people pulling their boats along with the gunwhales of other boats.

getting back to the topic

doesany one have any ideas what colour i should paint my international 14 i am thinking black whith yellow warning strips

blue with a lightening bolt

pink(i have a pink harness)

or floressent orange

oh an does any one know wher i can get silver paint cause that would look soo good( and blind the competitiors)

i thought that but what happens if i get damage( have already broken one mast and a kevlar main)

i suppose that it would look good though

but what bout a silver boat that have never been done before

In the Laser 4000s the boat colour does seem to depend on the year. The early ones were mostly red or blue, and it seems the ones with sail numbers around 4400 to 4450 (built 1998 ish), like mine (4408) tend to be purple/white.

At one point we ended up with four at our club that were all purple/white (4408, 4402, 4424, 4437)! Most annoying when someone said "I saw you capsize" and it was one of the other boats

http://www.geocities.com/stealthmarine2002/stealth_marine_F16_beam_landing.jpg - There's nothing new in this world!    You used to be able to get the Stealth F16 with metallic silver gelcoat.  Don't know if they ever actually sold one but it was on the options list at an extra £1K I think. 

[QUOTE=olly_love]but what bout a silver boat that have never been done before/QUOTE]

Yes it has. There was a silver-painted yacht racing in the racing 15 years ago.

i think that i will do a good paint job and also do the rudder and mast

have you got any pics of silver boats

sailior girl have you got a pic of the yacht with the mirrors

Trouble is; the shinier the paint the more the imperfections in the hull stand out.

As for grey RS400's mine was grey and it was RS415 (or 15 in any normal fleet) so I guess it's a recurring theme.

Crewed a 400 on Sunday.  It reminded me how good it is.  We didn't get a very good start but were free to tack off from the fleet and went into the lead, soon caught by a 800 which went on to win.  We were piped by another on the final beat due to missing a big shift on one side of the lake.  It was hard work, I guess the wind was about a 4 since the 800 was twin wiring downwind.

There was less wind in the afternoon and we had one of those moments at the leeward mark with boats converging from all directions which unsettled our gybe and we went for a swim.  The water was freezing - I could feel it soaking in through the zip down my back as I dragged the spinnaker back into the chute.  That rather took the fight out of us and we finished 13th out of about 18.

I was completely tired out when I got home - not used to sitting out quite that hard in the 4000!

lol sounds fun redback, and on the silver boat topic yeah it definalty has been done before we even had a cool semi silver boat in cadets took bout 6months to work out if it was silver or grey as it changed depending on waht direction you looked at it from.

And using car paints would be sooooo cool if you could use the ones that changed colour depending on the direction you looked at them from. - I think one colour is called mermaid, ironic...

yer would you go anywere then?

My father once came up with the bizarre race winning tactic of painting each side of his boat a different colour, in a bid to outfox the other competitors and possibly the race officer. He painted one side of his Scorpion green, the other side red, and the bottom was half white and half blue!

if he was over the start line, it might confuse the race officer if it was different colours on different sides!

Yeah the idea was to confuse the race officer ('it's the red, no green boat which is over line / hit that mark' etc etc), as well confusing the other competitors ('hahaha the white scorpion has capsized', or we seem to have lost the red scorpion (when it's actually on the other tack and now green etc).

Can't remember if he got the colours the right way round, I think so but it was a long time ago. I have seen others stick red/green tape to their boom to remember port/s'board!

i can't keep up with any of the threds anymore, there moving like crazy, so this is a little way back,

harry the royal blue toppers look best by far, red is just common, my brothers topper is royal blue

Yeah i reckon blue looks nice but i reckon red looks gd aswell (thats what i got) !

Harry i only realised that the regional travellers started in April a few days ago....gd hopefully i can do the whole circuit then...........and as many sunsail things as pos

Me and my Brother both have problems remembering right from left but no problem remembering port from starboard. It always makes for interesting navigation in the car.

Oh, good. I'm not the only one with an isolated left-right problem. We have to use 'this way' and 'that way' with hand signals when I'm in the car. i've also been banned from giving intructions over the phone as well since some dinner guests got lost in 1999 (last heard of heading North from Loch Gilphead).

Like you Matt, I've never suffered with port-starboard problems!

lol that could be interesting!!!

Yeah mine did that and knocked me off the wire