Recent content by Theodore

The Radial lowers aren't pre-bent, but many of them seem to end up that way! :D

Doubled purchase on the old rigging.

Hm I was very wrong, thank you for the advice!

Do you have enough vang on that the boom doesn't rise when you ease? I can't ever get mine so that easing is favorable to pinching. I'm sure you're right that pinching is bad if you can get your vang set that way.

In light winds, aren't you a lot looser on the sail shape? Those wrinkles should be taken out by faster air, which I'm assuming you've set the sail for in that picture. Just eyeballing the cunningham...May be wrong. Might just be old-sail-itis

My number one piece of advice is...Make sure you're warm, no matter what happens. My sailing sucked so much more (still sucks, but I'm getting closer to atmospheric pressure) when I was concerned about getting wet and cold. I wasn't hiking hard, I was tentative in the tacks, etc. As soon...

You're smiling instead of grimacing, and you're doing the hand-on-gunwhale style hiking, (a personal favorite of mine in the style department, almost as good as the "one-foot-barefoot waterskiing" hiking technique) so I assume you weren't interested in performance. I'd flatten the sail just...

I've got a 74 as well! Fun little secret, when my hull is dry it's about 5 pounds lighter than a 2010 Laser :D Don't paint the boat. It's heavy and in my opinion, always looks worse than a distressed gelcoat. Wetsand it to get rid of the "Chalk" and you're good to go.

Draft looks a bit far back, but your cunningham is pretty loose as well. Were you getting any weather helm? For what it's worth, it looks fantastic compared to my 1980-something 3.2 ounce Laser sail.:D I would probably buy one of those if they were stitched like radial sails. They last so...

I'm not sure about centripetal force. Lasers are pretty slow in the grand scheme of things. An Inter-20 cat will buck you in jibes no problem, but they also goes 25 knots with ease. Bearing away from the wind with an overtrimmed sail is akin to running dead before the wind. The sail stops...

You should not be capsizing to windward on a beat..unless you weight upwards of 500 pounds. Bearing off, if you're not luffing, will make the sail LESS efficient. It's not about "presenting area", it's about getting the sail acting as an air foil. That is why you capsized to windward. If the...

How do you let the main out with the bow in the wind? You should be in irons, and have a slow leeward (backwards) slide away from the dock with the bow in the wind. Drop your daggerboard in, backwind the main and away you go. You're making it more complicated than it should be.

If the wind dictates letting the boom out that far, I generally don't rig it all the way, and tie a square knot at the last boom block before the mainsheet block. I had to drop the boom because I had the boat on the dolly at the time. Thanks for the tip though. I could have used it many...

Funny you mention this, the one time I succeeded in getting the full rig picked up and in the step, I had to drop the boom because a windshift left the boat sailing by the lee while I was wheeling it to the beach in a corridor too narrow to turn it around.

I cracked open the ports on my 74 Laser..Bone dry.. But I can see a broken off square piece of plastic, I presume to be one of the faces of a flotation bottle. What do I do about this? Tupperware? ;)