tillerman
Super Anarchist
Oh sorry. I used a word that only old people like me will remember. I should have said, "What is surprising is that it took 19 years before someone rescued ILCA6 sailors from the 3:1 vang.
Lasers - Applying a Blow Torch
- Thread starter Otterbox
- Start date
Wess
Super Anarchist
LOL. I wonder how many gave up the sport. The horrors of it all..
tillerman
Super Anarchist
Not many. The Laser was hugely popular through the 3:1 vang era, but only a Luddite would want to go back.
Bill5
Right now
You have lost me with your “logic”, Wess. You say the class association made a great call in dividing the fleet into three with the introduction of the Radial and 4.7. But the same class association is lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon wheel rut when they introduced better controls enabling youth, women and smaller people to control the rig more effectively. Is this your position?
Wess
Super Anarchist
Only a libertarian luddite, indeed!!
Lots of breeze here. Sailing the big boat doing over 20 yesterday and realized… no vang at all!
#GoBackJack
Wess
Super Anarchist
My position Bill is that my gosh Canadians are dense. There was very little division. It was addition with the radial. The new vang and smart pig break the boat and didn’t add (other than to ILCA till) or divide. It simply drove up costs. It’s not better racing. It’s just more money for the class and builders for no better sailing for sailors.
Gouvernail
Lottsa people don’t know I’m famous
Sorry Wess… You and I totally disagree about the 2001 rig improvements.
The two decade old systems have worked very well.
As of 2001 we simply had functional rigging,
Before that, Lasers had downright silly controls.
Most of the kids sailing Lasers in this weekend’s regatta weren’t born when the rigging changed.
Also, In the year after the new rigging came out the North American class membership grew by over 500 to the highest it has been since the early 1980s. Class membership peaked at 3147 members in August of 2002.
Maybe having controls that actually worked had something to do with that.
Unless it was…. Never mind
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tillerman
Super Anarchist
In the 30 years with the 3:1 vang, about 170,000 Laser were sold - average 5700 per year.
In the 20 years with "improved" controls, about 50,000 Lasers and ILCAs have been sold - average 2500 per year.
I have no idea what that proves other than that the Laser has been extremely popular for a helluva long time.
The average design date of the 10 most popular International dinghy classes, by current average annual sales, is 1959.
The average design date of the 10 most popular UK classes is 1984, compared to the USA's 1950. BUT - although there are no really good bases for comparison, it doesn't seem that dinghy sailing is vastly more popular in the UK than in Australia (average design date of the top 10 about 1962) or Germany (average design date about 1957). The French "top 10" average design date is about 1962. So while the age of the US fleet does seem to be a problem, the German fleet isn't much newer and sailing is very popular there and there doesn't seem to be any strong relationship between the design age of popular classes and national sailing participation overall.
Most of the popular new classes are junior boats (RS Tera and Feva in the UK, Open "Skiff" and Feva in France) and even the most popular "skiff" type, the 29er, doesn't make the top 10 in any of these countries.
The US situation must surely suffer from the huge population and area, which seems to make it hard for grass roots classes to spread. The collapse of the Vanguard 15, JY15 etc seem to underline that in the USA, a class' fate is closely linked with the class manufacturer's commercial decisions. And surely it's hard to work out the cause and effect of the lack of new designs in the USA top 10 - is the dinghy scene small because the boats are old, or are the boats old because the scene is so small that manufacturers can't bring in new designs easily?
Gouvernail
Lottsa people don’t know I’m famous
Geezer
[email protected]
Banned
- Banned
- #4,853
Unless it was from you, right Guv? Did you do anything wrong when you ran the class, Guv?
Wess
Super Anarchist
The old controls worked fine. All you are doing with the new ones is appeasing pussies who are too weak and lazy to learn how to sail the boat well. Surprised they haven’t petitioned for a class approved drink holder too. Wimps.
Gouvernail
Lottsa people don’t know I’m famous
Hell yes!!! I spent three years trying everything I could think of to cause a healthy growth of the community and the game of Laser.
There was rarely a week that passed without realizing the previous week’s grand scheme was a dud.
One thing I have never done is to complain about the efforts of others without offering to help create solutions. I think the worst possible thing a person can do is bitch about the best efforts made by others while failing to attempt to get involved in creating better solutions.
How have you helped the Laser sailing game?? Has any one of your ideas, like many of mine, simply fallen on its face or made things worse?
Have you stuck around after failing and worked to clean up a mess you made?
Summary:
A. I never “ran the Class.” I handled the secretarial duties which, because I felt like doing the extra work, included promotion, on site support at 25 events a year, more promotion, building a website, writing articles for national and regional publications, Attending US sailing meetings, selling training videos, stocking and laser appropriate trophies , stocking and selling Laser related books, finding and publishing information about hundreds of regattas, and either finding a volunteer or making certain EVERYTHING got done.
B. Some people offer their best effort while certain others demonstrate their ability to complain.
Bill5
Right now
So smaller kids and women plus older sailors who aren’t so nimble or strong anymore are pussies. That’s quite a statement.
Gouvernail
Lottsa people don’t know I’m famous
The old controls sucked.
Adjusting the outhaul or vang while hiking was impossible
Adjusting the cunningham properly in breeze over about 12 mph meant hurting your hand for those strong enough to adjust it at all.
Maybe you have forgotten how bad they were.
Old rigging is shown here below the 2001 rigging.
Laser rigging photos
Perhaps the new rigging allows people who are less acrobatic and strong to play the game in a more competent manner but it certainly does not change who is at the very front or very back. Mostly, the new rigging allows us all to get a little more enjoyment out of the experience.
With the old rigging, failing to ease the vang, cunningham, and outhaul before bearing away at the weather mark resulted in some truly horrendous outcomes. Not only might you bend your boom ( especially in the years before a reinforcing sleeve was approved), your overly flat sail was extremely difficult to control and uncontrolled wipe outs were much more likely.
If your vang was still on at the reach mark ( we used to have reach marks) it was common to catch the boom on your lifejacket or your head and end up swimming.
Fine tuning of the outhaul as the breeze picked up or dropped was difficult even with the loops and eventually legalized thimbles.
The plastic traveler eyes had a time release breaking system. ( they were designed to break when you happened to be sailing the best race of your life)
I must suppose you liked the metal gudgeons that often folded off to one side.
Swivels for the old vang we’re not approved until sometime in the eighties.
Of course when the boat came out it had the 3.2 ounce sail. You really didn’t need a cunningham, functioning outhaul, or a decent vang because the sail depowered itself. Maybe you liked the 3.2 becsuse you got to visit your local dealer to buy a new sail before every single regatta that
Mattered.
I would rather spend that money once a year and but the modern rigging once per boat.
In the long run, the new sail and new rigging actually cost less
You can get me to argue either side on hiking pants and I am not a fan of on the water coach boats.
But the twenty year old rigging was a great addition to Laser sailing
And finally:
The class has had a rule allowing a water bottle rack on the mast since at least thirty years ago.
Gouvernail
Lottsa people don’t know I’m famous
This ignoring the thread thing sure doesn’t require a lot of typing.
Rubbish. As others have pointed out, the controls worked fine for middle-aged men but not for kids and women or the guys who are still racing competitively when people like you have whined yourself to death.
Think you summed that up perfectly, Gouv. 👍
