Buying new gear for Club Laser fleet

Riv

Active Member
Hi all,

It's time to start thinking about new gear for next year. Our 4 boat fleet has been well used this year as the lockdown has meant that everybody has been staying at home and sailing instread of sitting in airport lounges trying to get somewhere with cheap booze.

We might buy enough rigs so that each of the 4 boats have a Radial and a Standard rig available, eight in total

We store the rigs, battens out, sail rolled around the mast inside the club house. This means eight rigs in total. We have the money to do thi, s it's about working out the details

Booms+battens stay in the boats together with all the other parts

Two of the four boats have Holt Vangs, the other two have mixture of bits

Normally the Holt Vangs we use will be attached to the rig, if we go this route we will have to buy 6 more vangs. They will cost £160 each ($216) so make up a good chunk of our expenditure.

Bearing in mind that these Lasers are used by fairly casual Club sailors is there foolproof way detaching the vang from the rig and leaving it in the boat, saving us some money as we would only need two vangs, to complete the set for the four boats? (This will also reduce the maintenance load).
 
Hi Riv,

I manage a 4 boat laser fleet for my yacht club which we have available for member use. We've had a big increase in boat usage this year as well due to COVID and people wanting to get out on the water. The way we manage our gear/rigging isn't perfect but may give you some ideas to expand your rig options without requiring the additional expense of multiple new vangs.

For our 4 boat fleet, we have gear to rig each boat as either or Radial or Standard rig as you're looking to do. We used to leave the vangs attached to the lower mast sections in the past but only have 4 vangs and quickly found this to be a problem as more boats began getting used simultaneously and more younger sailors started using the boats and needing the radial rigs. I bought new clevis pins and rings for the vangs so they can easily be attached and removed from the lower mast sections. You can alternatively use a quick release or toggle pin to attach the vang to the vang tang on the mast which makes the connection even easier for your sailors. As part of our rigging procedures now, the vangs are always removed from the mast/boom when the boat is derigged and they get stored in the foil bag with the rest of the rigging. Our boats get completely derigged after use so the vang, mainsheet, cunningham, outhaul, and traveler rigging all gets stored in the foil bag so that everything needed to rig a boat is in one kit.
 
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I have made various mods for our club fleet which have all three rigs-.
Loop of rope attached to the 4.7 clews so that the outhaul doesn't have to be adjusted radically
Outhaul pulley at the gooseneck fitted with a hook to hook into the gooseneck hole; if it isn't at the top, drill another one. Avoids having to rethread the outhaul when using a different lower mast section
Two tubular jamming cleats fitted on a block instead of the cam cleats, much cheaper and easier to adjust by a set amount
Elastic on the rudder downhaul in case it hits the ground.
I made 16:1 kickers by inverting the lower block and adding a cam cleat.
Clew strap attached to the boom otherwise they get lost.

Plus a few minor things....
 

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