“Practice” sails, blades etc.

Laser67

New Member
What is the difference between new items listed as practice and those items not listed as practice?
 
In most cases, a practice sail would be a non class legal sail. So you can sail with it and have fun, but if it's not legal to use in many regattas. Now there are new boats in the same category.
 
It's a trade-off: decent price/being allowed to race.

No real difference in quality, performance etc... They say it's the price you have to pay for real one design racing though.
 
You probably noticed that there's another recent thread about this: Laser Cockpit Autobailer "Not class legal for racing" . . . What?

"Practice" is one of the words that Laser (or just "Laser-compatible") parts salespeople use when they mean "illegal". The actual quality varies quite a bit between the products in question, as do the prices. Some may be practically identical to the corresponding legal parts, but in general, the makers of these have little incentive to produce anything of comparable quality. That's not what they're competing on.

If you're not racing at all (class rules do apply on all levels), then of course you can even fit your boat with an outboard, or use it as a flowerpot (I have actually seen that :confused: ). But even for total non-racers, I recommend sticking to only legal equipment. You can be sure of the quality/compatibility, and t's not an awful trouble to keep the option of being able to race without a major refit. Shouldn't hurt resale value, either.

(And if you're really shoestringing it, there's always the second-hand market.)

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“But even for total non-racers, I recommend sticking to only legal equipment. You can be sure of the quality/compatibility, and t's not an awful trouble to keep the option of being able to race without a major refit.”

in the US, LP wasn’t really interested in keeping parts - and boats - available. Not to mention keeping parts prices so high it discourages sailors from legally updating older boats.

With Sunfish, LP took things one step further and provided junky boats, multiple variations on centerboard and rudder shapes, some racing sails that were not the standard cut, and some things that just don’t work well, like stainless steel goosenecks.
 
... LP wasn’t really interested in keeping parts - and boats - available.
True. I touched on this in that other thread. Without LP the fake-part problem would be at least much smaller. It's somehow fitting that they're now themselves producing fake hulls, with the help of a fake class association.

In the UK replica parts are accepted at many clubs now.
A sailing club has no authority over the rules of a World Sailing class.

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A sailing club has no authority over the rules of a World Sailing class.

Of course it does. Actually it's World Sailing who has no authority over any sailing club.

WS has authority over the races organised by the club only if the club wants a particular race to be held under those rules (usually one or two of the races we do here in a year).

I race every Friday and we don't even care if people sail on 4.7, radial or standard, WS can't do anything about it.
 
True. I touched on this in that other thread. Without LP the fake-part problem would be at least much smaller. It's somehow fitting that they're now themselves producing fake hulls, with the help of a fake class association.

A sailing club has no authority over the rules of a World Sailing class.

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Of course it does Lali. Most clubs in UK just accept the 'practice' sails for racing because it is more important to have more numbers on the water rather than tell people to stay at home because they are fake laser sailors lolz.
 
Actually it's World Sailing who has no authority over any sailing club.
Before posting my previous message, I thought if I was making a mistake of using the correct term "World Sailing class" instead of the former "international". I obviously did: I didn't mean that WS itself directly governs the running of individual clubs' activities (because of course it doesn't), but simply that you can't locally override rules that are decided on the class association level, and which apply worldwide.

Most clubs in UK just accept the 'practice' sails for racing ...
Think about it this way: if you don't use the class rules of a given class, then what rules do you use? It's not as simple as "just accepting" everything.

Anyway, this is getting somewhat off topic, and I think the other current thread is a better place for a "deeper" discussion. To the original poster: the short answer to your question is, physically not necessarily very big, but legally they're night and day.

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