Any interest in a M rig sail and spar

B

bluemorty333

New Member
I just bought a old laser (1976) and it came with the old M rig (modified rig). This rig was developed in 1975 and was the precusor to the Radial Rig. Dick Tillman describes the M rig in "The complete book of Laser sailing"
Apparently, this old sail was never used much by the previous owner and is amazingly still crisp. I was shocked when I took it out of the bag.

I was thinking of selling the rig on ebay but wanted to see if there was any interested before I did.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks.
 
Apparently it is a bad design: it is impossible to depower the sail. Yet, I am sure someone will be interested in it!
 
On the former DrLaser site Neil Berman uses the following citation about the M-laser (I am not clear about the original source, it only says WG):

"It was Laser's first attempt at a shorter rig, which failed miserably. It used the regular bottom section and a shortened top section. The key to the radial is that it has a shorter, thinner bottom section so that it bends more to help depower the sail. With the M rig, you couldn't depower the sail if your life depended on it. In fact, in a breeze, it's even harder to hold down than the standard rig!" WG

Nothing about a halyard, but who knows...
 
Hi,

I own an M sail and top, but never used it. It is a radial cut, and has a custom top section somewhat shorter than the full rig. It uses the standard bottom section. The whole sleeve is larger by 50-75 %. The top has an eye and cleat, that stuck up above the sail.

You (supposedly) can raise and lower the sail with a halyard thru the top eye, then cleat/uncleat it from the deck. When uncleated, the bigger sleeve allows you to "claw" the sail down, and sort of stack it on the boom.

The idea was to make the rig smaller, and easier for kids, summer camps, etc. as Lasers main competitor was the Sunfish/sailfish at the time.

I agree the still (full) lower couldn't be flattened with the 3:1 vang, etc. thus it has no comparison to the modern radial set-up. But it is/was useful for a beach boat, especially compared to the Sunfish.

You can make a nice "M" top out of a broken full/radial top, and the eye and cleat you took off for a Pro upgrade, so it's essentially free ;-)

Al Russell 164308
 
vtgent49 said:
You can make a nice "M" top out of a broken full/radial top, and the eye and cleat you took off for a Pro upgrade, so it's essentially free ;-)Al Russell 164308
Click to expand...
Coincidentally, I sailed last week with a woman in Sarasota Bay who had the M rig. She had an 80's boat and didn't know her Radial rig was any different from the modern ones. She had no problem sailing with it (in fact, she was one with the boat), but did dread the wind coming up more than 12 knots. It was 10 to 12 knots both days we sailed.

If you wanted to imitate the M, you'd have to alter your regular Radial sail too, by removing the webbing at the top so the sail can slide down over the mast, and also sewing on a halyard, or adding a grommet to attach the halyard. Her halyard was attached to the sail.

In setting up on the beach, she slid the sail onto the lower part of the mast and placed just the short bit in the mast step. She then threaded the halyard through a block on the top part of the mast and put the top mast on the bottom part. She pulled on the halyard and voila, the sail pulled right up. I can't remember what she had for fixing the halyard down, but there was something.

It looked so easy it made me think about trying something similar, especially for those windy days when balancing a mast into the step is a magician's trick. If the original was impossible to depower, it sounds like the way to go would be to alter a modern sail. But the question is, would the alteration make it hard to depower, or was there just a defect in the original sail?

Merrily
 
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