ILCA drop LPE as a builder

Even if there was a SMOD where no differences could be detected between new boats, that's all out of the window the moment the boats are no longer new. Some boats will get more scratches, some will get more fatigue and go softer. Likewise the sails will age.

But since the detectable differences between Laser sailors dimensions are hugely more noticeable than the boats, it's all good enough.

If you want fair racing on a limited budget, I think it helps to ask what you think is 'fair'.

You might consider that Laser racing is only fair when you're racing against people of similar age/weight/fitness. So long as I can accept that the people who beat me are sailing better than me, that's good enough IMHO. And the best way to be fairly sure of that is to find a bunch of people racing Lasers, buy a Laser of comparable age and the same make of replica sail.

Likewise any class will do at amateur level, but  you don't want to be too heavy/old/light/unfit/skint compared with everyone else. Find some comparable sailors you respect and race what they race. Whether it's a Laser, a Squib or an RS400, the boat is just a device to race against people.

In an ideal world, you're right.

In the ideal world, the differences between the one design boats are small enough to have a negligible effect on performance, so you turn up at the dealer and just grab the boat nearest the door.

In the real world (of lasers), there are significant differences between the boats and quality control is sub-par (maybe this will change when new builders start building and we no longer have to buy from LPE).  It's not just the things that are hard to get exactly right like rake.  Weights are different,  alignment of foils, the deck being centered over the hull, some boats leak from new...

There's no reasonable way of preventing a sailor from deliberately *not* purchasing hulls that they don't like the look of.   What would you do? Say that you have to take the next hull off the line?  The buyer would just walk away and come back another day. 

The solution is to increase quality control in production so that there aren't performance impacting differences.