Lasers

How would you improve the Laser? I've sailed them a bit, and I know I've got a few little issues:

1. Transom is squared off, so the traveller gets caught.
2. Annoying to step the mast

How about you all?

 

You wouldn't. Any modification to the boat disqualifies it for one-design racing and seriously reduces its resale value. If you're intent on changing it anyway, I would install (a) a rack to hike out farther and (b) moth-style mast supports just below the boom. I would like to chop off the overhanging lip around the deck, but it might weaken the hull too much. And the clew patch is a hunka junk, it needs to be bigger and more tapered. Stepping the mast is just a fact of life.

 

I agree with Skippy... for the most part... The fact that it's a one design is the big thing with the laser... The fact that it's relatively simple (not to sail fast, but the design) is another... I'm not familiar with the clew issues, and might move to a trapeze before racks...

I wouldn't ask what to do to improve the laser, but rather look into what people might like in a single-handed dinghy... I realize it's a bit more open-ended, but changing the laser isn't very practical... it's too established... Mind you, there is value in criticizing existing designs...

Cheers,

Dave

p.s. I've got one n' love it... just need to sail it more ;-)

 

No, I'm just asking what problems you've had with it. I love the Laser, but I have some minor grievances.

 

DaveB: might move to a trapeze before racks

Can you put traps on an unstayed rig? Or do you mean convert to a stayed rig?

 

I'd think that the rig would have to be modified... There are enough step problems without the additional load that a trapeze would cause. I guess you could have a trapeze on an unstayed rig, but the laser's relatively small and I'm suspicious that a stayed rig might be better... The Contender rig might be worth looking at.

Cheers,

Dave

p.s. the reason i thought a trapeze might be added before racks is that it would get the weight out approximately the same distance and wouldn't interfere as much on other points of sail or require hull modifications... Having a stayed rig would require that chainplates be installed and re-inforced, which would not be trivial... The mast would also need to be modified as it's effective stiffness would likely change

 

How about hiking wings? They're always fun.

 

Where would you stop ??

hull - a bit wide and heavy, made of polyester CSM - gets soft and dead quite quickly
foils - a bit basic, especially the flexy rudder system that makes downwind a nightmare in strong winds
rig heavy and basic unstayed, can't get the right leech tension and rig shape.
Sail cloth goes stretchy.
controls , basic and see above
Painful to sit out, low freeboard,

Which came first, the Contender or the laser - They are superficially similar in hull shape -Contender is longer with trapeze and stayed rig.

I have sold a number of boats and designs that are really fast, light, last well, nice to sail etc etc..... but made only a few $$ / ££ , compared to lasers that have sold many thousands - so which is "better"?

If you want an improved laser, sail something else. ( eg a contender is a bit more advanced )

 

So much could be don. Lasers are some of the best boats...ever, but they have failings. I'm just asking, because if someone was to design a singlehanded one design dinghy, to see what people dislike (or like, if you would prefer) about the Laser (one of the most successful one-designs I know of).

 

I would prefer a boat that had more freeboard and a rig with more gust reponse - but then it wouldn't be a Laser!

 

Simple answer: get out the angle grinder, cut it in half and go get a better boat!!

I would gladly argue that lasers, while they were a brilliant design in terms of cheapness and met their original consumer market (Joe Bloggs who wanted something easy to sail that was cheap back in the late 60's,early 70's), the design has been long since surpassed, and as such has a few problems as a high-performance olympic racer. Their only upside is the sheer numerical strength of the class. This would make the Laser a bit like the original VW Beetle; built to a purpose in extreme numbers, but not all of them are still "on the road", and they aren't exactly what you would call user friendly. Why drive a bug when there are many better things around? Same thing goes with the Laser... why sail a laser when (for example) there are moths around? I am not trying to turn this into an inter-class slanging match here, but the marked difference between the boats is so great that it is not ignorable.

My justification is as follows:

The laser hull has a surprisingly bluff bow profile. Why? This is just extra resistance and makes lasers nasty to sail in waves, as they like to push their bows in (from my experience). Admittedly, this makes the boats next to impossible to nose-dive, but it also makes the boats very difficult to keep moving in anything above millpond conditions.

Those decks tend to pigeon-hole the type of sailor who can sail them successfully, as they are extremely wide, the sailor needs to be fairly tall in order to be comfortable. Otherwise, the are just torturous. This could be improved by having a modern, open-transom self-draining deck, moulded to allow a wider range of physicalities to sail them. Alternatively, B14-style racks could be done (as they have no support wires to the mast), which would assist in weight and performance equalisation. But, this would mean that the boat would be even more difficult downwind in a blow, as the wings would tend to drag when heeled to windward.

The boats go soft: this is simply a fact of life and 420s/470s suffer similar problems, due to the round bilge profile of the boat. This means that top-notch laser racing can become a very expensive proposition, as the hull needs replacing every 2 or 3 seasons.

Soft sails: why on earth do lasers still run non-resinous cloths for their mains? The Australian "Spiral" (laser trainer) runs resinous mains, which last up to 5 competetive seasons. Laser sails (if you're lucky, and use a training main solely for training) last 1 or 2 at most. Yet again, high ongoing costs.

Compare this to a moth (as above, this isn't for any reason other than comparison):

Pros:
Very unique style of sailing (on foils that is) more like hang-gliding or windsurfing than traditional dinghy sailing.

Very cheap initial cost (you can get into a competitive axeman for AUS$3k, and then convert that to a foiler for a total cost of AUS$6k). That is unsurpassed bang for your buck (23 knots for $6000... compared to 12knts/$6000 (and that's a cheapish laser)).

Mylar/Kevlar sails last 3 or 4 seasons at the top (presuming that nothing new comes along, such as rules changes or when the pocket-luff mains became standard).

Weight. There simply isn't any. Lasers weigh in at 60+kgs, hull only. The lightest moths are 33kgs rigged. The average is about 40kg rigged.

Cons:

Good luck learning how to sail one of these things. They often suffer of stability issues in very light winds, and as such want to sit on one wing or the other. This is a very annoying tendency, and has been known to even cause seasickness. :S

Reliability: The old moth saying goes "If you didn't break something, you aren't trying hard enough". You'll be hard pressed to find any moth regatta in which someone didn't break something in some way. Even though carbon is slowly becoming cheaper, it is never a good thing to break it, and moths do... regularly.

Resale: The day that carbon masts and pocket luff mains came into existance, the average resale value of any moth built prior to that pretty much halved. This is bad if you happen to get caught out in that kind of situation, but good if you want to get into something quick, cheaply.


So, ultimately, if someone went out there and tried to create a one-design laser/moth hybrid, something with modern technology, but with the sheer numbers of lasers, it would be unbeatable in terms of being a modern racer for the modern era. The thing is, the RS300 in the UK seems to have tried that, but it is yet to crack the popularity barrier. At the same age (in terms of being a class), lasers had over 10,000 boats registered, as opposed to 600.

Please take no offence to this criticism and comparison, it is meant in a constructive manner, and as a matter of fact I am about to spend the weekend on a laser simulator with Frank Bethwaite, trying to improve my sailing. I know it'll hurt like hell, but it'll be worth it.

 

"The design has been long since surpassed, and as such has a few problems as a high-performance olympic racer."

Well, it hasn't been surpassed as a popular one design, really. And it's not a "high-performance" Olympic racer, just an Olympic racer.

"Their only upside is the sheer numerical strength of the class."

No, they also have other upsides. They are (for a "non assisted" boat (ie no hiking aids) still surprisingly fast, especially for a minimalist boat (only 7m2 of sail, compared to C 8m2 for OKs, Moths, Europes etc). Look at the yardsticks - faster than the OK, Europe, almost as fast as the Finn. They are delightful to roll tack and roll gybe in light/moderate conditions. We in OZ often get the worst of the boat, sailing in choppy and windy stuff. It's nice in light winds and flat water.

"Why drive a bug when there are many better things around? Same thing goes with the Laser... why sail a laser when (for example) there are moths around? I am not trying to turn this into an inter-class slanging match here, but the marked difference between the boats is so great that it is not ignorable."

Well, speaking as an ex-Mothie (actually still have a scow under the decking) the Laser has the guarantee that it will not be out-designed; requires much less maintenance; and offers great OD racing with all that means in a very deep way, that has a lot to do with the fact that you can forget about the boat - whether the Baz rig is better in 8 knots with the CST stick, whether you should change foil profiles - and just feel the sailing.

As a former Moth world champ designer/sailor says, the Laser and 470 etc are pieces of athletic equipment and shoould be seen in that light. Their qualities as a boat are irrelevant. Maybe the shot-put would be better if it was streamlined - who cares? Maybe a 120 metre running sprint would be better than 100 m? Who cares? Maybe McGrath would get more wickets if he could use a grenade launcher instead of throwing the ball. Who cares? The boat is just, in a way, the sportsfield on which you play.

"The laser hull has a surprisingly bluff bow profile. Why? This is just extra resistance and makes lasers nasty to sail in waves, as they like to push their bows in (from my experience). Admittedly, this makes the boats next to impossible to nose-dive, but it also makes the boats very difficult to keep moving in anything above millpond conditions."

The bow is a logical follow-on from the concept of the boat as a light cartopper. That meant reducing freeboard to save weight, which required a bow that would not nosedive. See below;

"Kirby’s earlier writings and older boats give an interesting angle on the Laser’s shape. He had long been working towards achieving a higher prismatic by spreading displacement into the ends, creating bows with a U shape that was shallower but had more underwater volume than the typical Vee shape.

These bows, wrote Kirby years before he created the Laser, were not as easy to get “into the groove” as the deep Vee bow (as many Laser sailors will agree), but they allowed the boat to plane and surf earlier.

The Laser takes the theme of flat underwater bow sections even further. The keel area is extremely flat in section, all the way to the stem, for a boat designed in the ‘60s. Outside of the keel flat, the shape developed very soft bilges.
“With the 14s I had gradually worked away from the deep, sharp Vee of my Mark I, to more U-shaped sections” remarks Kirby although rather surprisingly he feels that “there might have been a bit of subconscious transfer from 14 to Laser, but I doubt it.”

But above the water, the Laser takes the opposite tack to Kirby’s I-14s. In the 14s, Kirby had been developing bows that were very fine above the waterline, to allow them to slice through chop. In contrast, the Laser bow flares out widely in the topsides. “The Laser is flat forward with a lot of flare to give the bow sufficient reserve buoyancy” explains Kirby. “The boat had to be light (it was to be a cartopper), so I had to keep skin area down. This meant low freeboard, which meant in turn that there was not much boat between the waterline and the gunwale. So what was there had to be given flare, to keep the boat from submarining in hard reaching and running. It worked pretty well. When you jam the bow, you sometimes survive!”
The flare in the Laser bow does make it hard work upwind in a chop, but Kirby says that it’s an inevitable trade-off for the boat’s other qualities. “The best upwind bow - fine above the waterline - would be a disaster on a small, low-freeboard boat like the Laser when you round the corner and head downwind in heavy air. If you cut the Finn’s freeboard down to Laser level forward and kept the section the same as it is now, she would have difficulty with the bow jamming in fast offwind sailing.”
“You will notice that the off-wind bow wave of the Laser is very flat – the water is thrown off to the side, but in the Finn the wave rises more steeply, and frequently the Finn’s freeboard saves the day. Perhaps a good expression is that the Laser has a “softer” bow.”
“One of the early Laser rip-offs had serious problems with nose-diving and gybe broaches, and never prospered. And one of the recent attempts at a mini Laser also stubs its toe very easily because it is too fine above the waterline. It’s surprising the number of designers who have missed many of the features of the Laser that have made it work.”
One designer who has picked up on the fuller bow is, ironically, Ian Bruce. When he designed the Byte as a sort of “baby Laser”, he made it finer along and above the waterlines at the bow. The finer shape works well upwind, when the Byte seems to slice through chop more effectively than a Laser. But Ian feels that the Byte does tend to nosedive more than a Laser downwind. “If I did the boat again, I’d fill it out here (indicating the Byte’s waterline) between three and six feet aft of the bow.”

I used to give the Laser and its bow heaps, even when I was campaigning one. I've become a bit more understanding of the concept now. Interestingly the boat's earliest real rival was the Banshee which has a very fine, hollow bow. The Laser proved at least as fast. The Laser bow does make sailing one at "cube" level a very intense experience, as you have to throw yourself and the boat around all the time and you have to get it right. I find the Laser more intense to sail upwind in a breeze than the International Canoe or windsurfers.

Re "Those decks tend to pigeon-hole the type of sailor who can sail them successfully, as they are extremely wide, the sailor needs to be fairly tall in order to be comfortable. Otherwise, the are just torturous."

Hmmm, I'm 5'7" and the Laser is OK. Interstingly a certain very tall Moth sailor has criticised the Laser (in Aust. Sailing) for being uncomfortable for TALL people!


"The boats go soft: this is simply a fact of life and 420s/470s suffer similar problems, due to the round bilge profile of the boat. This means that top-notch laser racing can become a very expensive proposition, as the hull needs replacing every 2 or 3 seasons."

Yes, it would be better if there was foam sandwich to keep the hulls stiff. No, the boats are NOT expensive to race at top level. Lasers sell, after a full and hard season including training about 2/3 days per week and racing, for about $1000 under full price. That's not much more than replacing the sail.

One Laser sailor I know borrowed a boat that was about 14 years old and hard used. The race committee called it "Scunge" because it looked scungy - a bad black paint job was peeling off the hull in sheets. The sail was crap. It was about 80,000 boats older than the new ones. It had, IIRC, the original sail. It was one of the best boats in the top fleet nationally (club champ won 3 open worlds).

The sailor eventually got a brand-new boat, and trained and club raced with the sail from "Scunge". He did titles with the good sail. He won the NSW/ACT district titles (overall and junior) from a fleet of 170+ boats (IIRC) including that year's world champ, won the national Youths, made the Open Worlds team - and he only used two sails (the old "Scunge" one and the new one) in all that time. He sold the new boat and lost about $400 IIRC. That's not expensive sailing.

"Soft sails: why on earth do lasers still run non-resinous cloths for their mains? The Australian "Spiral" (laser trainer) runs resinous mains, which last up to 5 competetive seasons. Laser sails (if you're lucky, and use a training main solely for training) last 1 or 2 at most. Yet again, high ongoing costs."

Yep, you're dead right. Spiral sails used to be not very OD, but yes Laser sails are not good and way too expensive.


"Compare this to a moth (as above, this isn't for any reason other than comparison):

Pros:
Very unique style of sailing (on foils that is) more like hang-gliding or windsurfing than traditional dinghy sailing.

Very cheap initial cost (you can get into a competitive axeman for AUS$3k, and then convert that to a foiler for a total cost of AUS$6k). That is unsurpassed bang for your buck (23 knots for $6000... compared to 12knts/$6000 (and that's a cheapish laser)).

No, you can get into a "competitive" Laser for $1000 quite easily. In fact I'd say a $1000 Laser could get you into the top 10 of the Radials nationally or the NSW Open big rig states, and both are much, much bigger fleets than the Moths get.

Of course, a second-hand Mistral or FW board or a new Windsurfer cost less than an old Moth, and go faster than a seahugger......

Cons of Moths - great boats, but one thing I'd include is that they are very uncomfortable in light airs IMHO and rather weight sensitive (according to Big Thorpie). There's not much chance to take a 10 minute relax between heats either.


"So, ultimately, if someone went out there and tried to create a one-design laser/moth hybrid, something with modern technology, but with the sheer numbers of lasers, it would be unbeatable in terms of being a modern racer for the modern era. The thing is, the RS300 in the UK seems to have tried that, but it is yet to crack the popularity barrier. At the same age (in terms of being a class), lasers had over 10,000 boats registered, as opposed to 600."

I've spoken to the RS chaps about the 300. They were, as you say, not a success. Nor was the Laser EPS which was a bit similar. The problem is, the RS director said, that if you want medium speed OD racing, the RS doesn't have enough extra pace to outweigh the huge fleets, great racing and user-friendliness of the Laser and Sabre/OK/O Jolle/Solo (take your pick depending on your country) types. Experience with the singlehanded Northie indicates that it is surprisingly hard to make a boat of Laser type (ie no wings/trap, stable at low speeds, medium rig size) significantly faster than a Laser.

If, on the other hand, you really want to go fast one-up, you go all the way to MPS/Canoe/RS 700/A Class. The 600 type seems logical but it falls between two stools. There's not much demand in Oz for high-performance singlehanders (I wish there was so I could get more Canoes to race against!)

Actually we used to have a winged singlehander that was great for club racing. It was about as fast as an RS300 (IIRC), it was much lighter, it was innovative, it was home built, it was fairly stable, it was suitable for all levels of sailors, it was an international class, it was huge fun. It was the Scow Moth, and it was largely killed by people who said "that's boring, we want to go faster" without considering some other aspects much. A classic case of the perils of developing without considering the future.

About the "modern era". If you look at trends, Moths, Canoes, development skiffs etc are not doing too well in the modern era. Sportsboats etc make a lot of noise but (in Oz) are not really popular. What IS doing well in twilighting, classic boats (Dragons had 276 boats at their anniversary regatta), Lasers, 420s, heavy F18 cats, Optis etc. The modern era is not about fast development classes, it's largely about tougher, mass-market, medium/slow speed one designs.

I'd love to find a way to help revive development classes, and free some of them (windsurfers, Canoes) up again - but until we work out that "faster is better" is not the whole story IMHO development classes will continue to be a very small part of the sport. Maybe we should learn from the Laser, and look at it in a positive light.

Moths are superb, as are A Classers, Formula 16HP cats and Int. Canoes (I sail the last 2) but Lasers are equally good, perhaps better, for what they are intended to do IMHO. It's just so different that, as you say, you can't compare them - just as you can't compare a Bug to a F1 car.

PS the real Laser will improve your sailing more than the simulator IMHO, tho' the simulator isn't bad at all.

 

Yup, the Laser is certainly a good boat. But perhaps the small dinghy market could use a bit of modernization. How about something like the Photon 14 (www.photon14.com)?
Maybe even a better rig....

 

Looks like a nice funboat, but the small dinghy market in other countries has moved on a long way ahead of the USA, and the RS300, MPS, Moth, singlehanded NS14 etc all seem much more advanced than the Photon. The Photon looks like more like the '60s cone shapes like the Europe and "Pipedream" National 12 than a modern dinghy or skiff (but I'm no designer). Not at all sure about the twin rudders or wedge style shape in a fairly heavy boat.

There's been a few US boats that (very vaguely) try the same style recently. Interesting that the US market has, for years, been getting dinghies designed by people who seem to get their ideas from big boats, rather than looking at what Moths, RSs, 9ers, I 14s, Cherubs etc have proven to be fast and efficient. Info says that the Raider, RSX or whatever it was are actually often slower than a Laser, which was designed by a leading development class designer. So you get at best a bit more speed, and lose the Laser's resale and massive fleets.

It would have been interesting to see what a top skiff designer like Bieker would have done on the Photon.

 

That would be interesting to see. Anyway, in regards to the Laser, its not gonna be replaced anytime soon. Maybe improved sails or spars but not replaced for at least a few decades.