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Frank Bethwaite's Higher Performance Sailing has a Laser Polar in fig 26.7. I presume he measured this as described elsewhere in his book. Namely, he would motor behind a fleet leader while racing with a GPS on board. After some time, they would stop and note wind speed and direction. I...

Frank Bethwaite's Higher Performance Sailing has a Laser Polar in fig 26.7. I presume he measured this as described elsewhere in his book. Namely, he would motor behind a fleet leader while racing with a GPS on board. After some time, they would stop and note wind speed and direction. I...

If you're not already wearing one, a hat helps enormously with cutting down the glare off little droplets on your glasses. I found this out not too long ago when I sailed without my hat. Also, contacts, being made of plastic, will do a decent job of blocking UV. Nike used to and maybe someone...

I can't imagine as big a vote as this taking place within the next decade of the Laser class, but in case it does, I would suggest announce that a vote will take point, say three months in the future, where polls will stay open for a period of a say a couple of weeks. That way, all interested...

Re: Lasers sailing in Indianapoils...Geist Reservoir MSey, Find yourself a Laser! I'm going to join the ISC, and would be happy to show you what I know about the boat and provide some friendly competition. Here's a link to a page with the NOR and SIs for the ISC Laser Regatta on April 9-10...

Re: Lasers sailing in Indianapoils...Geist Reservoir I moved over the winter to Indy. I'm trying to figure out which club is the better bet out of Geist or Eagle Creek (the size of the Laser fleet being the major consideration). Any other Laserites around Indy out there? The combination of...

Oh no! Threaded rod in bending! Cardinal sin in mechanical design, at least according to Carroll Smith. I would have drilled out the blind hole to a slightly larger diameter with a Forstner bit and then lined it with fiberglass to bring it back to the original diameter. That ought to...

Alan, I disagreed with your legal opinion, but I didn't misrepresent what you said. Since we should seek to cast light rather than heat on the issues, here's what I learned when I dug around a bit on copyright law. I thought that if a creative work didn't have a copyright notice on it, it...

I don't think people are suggesting that the cloth is expensive because it is old, but rather that newer, higher performance (i.e. longer lasting) cloth could be used.

I think we all agree that an Intensity sail is not a class legal sail. But it is intended to replicate it for the purposes of training. There is nothing to legally stop them from doing this. And I say well done to them for illustrating the absurdity of the current situation. I remember your...

Thank you for correcting me. I didn't know that. In that case it truly is a razors and razor blade model.

Here's how I see the Laser and its sails. To an extent, it's like the razor and razor blades model. Gillette sells a razor at a loss, but then makes the money back by overpricing razor blades. Needless to say, you buy more blades than razors. The price of a new boat doesn't seem too onerous...

No, they don't set the price to the end user, but they do set it to the retailers. Any monopolist is a market maker. Given that Intensity manufactures and retails a replica for around $250, and presumably makes a profit doing so, we know the sail costs substantially less than that to...

Alan, how can it be a "copy sail" if it's fully battened and made of Mylar? A deliberately different sail makes it a new class, just like a Rooster and a Radial are different to a Laser Standard.

The regional monopolies on sail making for the Laser grossly inflate the price. This is borne out by the fact that Intensity Sails makes some thing nearly the same for less than half the price. The consensus here seems to be that the class sanctioned sails aren't very consistent anyway...

I replaced the mechanical universal on my tiller with a rubber one because I didn't like occasionally getting the universal stuck in gimbal lock. Ever since I've just left the rubber universal attached to tiller and extension. Any other opinions on whether that really does shorten its life?

I second that, Mr Moose. I found that thread really useful when I replace my boom sleeve.

First, be sure to drill out the rivets properly. That means not drilling all the way through, but drilling off the heads and punching out the rest, just as airplane mechanics to. I wrote a post on my blog about it with some photos...

In metric that would be 5 mm diameter and 6 mm grip. I'm pretty sure my boom, which was made in the UK was done with 5 mm rivets, but 3/16" (actually 4.76 mm) was close enough, and all I could get here in the US given that most of the rivets I used were stainless. For the outhaul fairlead, you...

I would use aluminum rivets there, since they're under very little stress, and it reduces the potential for galvanic corrosion. I'd still use a corrosion inhibitor, though.