"coloured laser sail"

fatstratblond

New Member
Hi! did laser sails every come (coloured) I saw a add for a used laser,but it is 4 hour drive from me the add said "laser with coloured sail" and few other things
 
Can anyone tell me if intensity sails have the laser star decal or not? I am afraid they don't, but I haven't seen any in my life. Now I am hesitating about buying one. I know it sounds stupidly, but a laser without a star is not a laser for me... Can we purchase such a decal from anywhere?
 
no you cant purchase it if i remember correctly and no the sails dont have them.

I think they should come out with special edition limited edition laser sails for olympic years and any other special events.
 
Andreas said:
Can anyone tell me if intensity sails have the laser star decal or not? I am afraid they don't, but I haven't seen any in my life. Now I am hesitating about buying one. I know it sounds stupidly, but a laser without a star is not a laser for me... Can we purchase such a decal from anywhere?

We have had this discussion before (http://www.laserforum.org/showthread.php?t=4390).
The Laser symbol is a registered trademark that is owned by Vanguard. Putting this symbol on a sail yourself is not proper. You may think this is silly, but companies spend lots of money defending their trademarks.
 
fsiewert said:
That's what happens when the "company" ownes the trademark and not the sailing "assosication".

Yes, in this way, companies are not motivated enough the produce better equipment for lower prices, because their products can't be called "laser" anyway. That's when making profit gets more important than sailing... I am sure that all the authorized Laser producers are making enormous extra-profits at our cost...
 
The sailing association does not own the trademark and therefore will not make the $$ on product sold ...but they also did not invest the money or take the r&d risk or make the product so why would they be entitled to the $ ???

Yes there is probably money made perhaps even lots of it but those are the rules we play by to be "truly one design"
 
Laser76489 said:
The sailing association does not own the trademark and therefore will not make the $$ on product sold ...but they also did not invest the money or take the r&d risk or make the product so why would they be entitled to the $ ???

What You are writing about is a patent. That's what is used for helping the companies in minimizing r&d risk. Patents expire after a certain time, I don't know after how long in the USA but I am almost sure it has already expired in the case of laser sails. Trademark is an other right which is not for minimizing r&d risk but for helping companies in distinguising their products from those of the others. I am not sure if the Laser logo is a trademark, but let's assume it is.
In this case the best solution could have been granting the association with the rights in connection with the laser logo. And then the laser association would've had the right to decide which producers' sails to award the laser logo and which not. Practically all producers would have to produce the same one design sail in such a situation but there could be at least a price competetion among them. Not like now, where You can buy an almost better intensity sail for not even the half of the price of the "real" laser sail.
 
Of course, I don't even try to contest that sticking a Laser logo on Your sail is illegal. But I don't think it hurts anyone if You don't want to race with it (then they will find it out anyway) or if You don't sell it to someone else believing it is a Laser sail.
 
In fact, when we buy a Laser sail, we give something like 500 USD to a monopolist as a gift, assuming that the same sail costs 750 as a laser and 250 as an intensity sail...

OK I stop provocation now.
 
Andreas said:
Patents expire after a certain time, I don't know after how long in the USA but I am almost sure it has already expired in the case of laser sails.

No, they've got the rights. I don't know how long a patent lasts. A copyright lasts for 75 years. Lasers have only been around since the 70s. Hey, are there any lawyers here who can tell us when the patents expire on the Laser and the sails? Can they be renewed?
 
"No, they've got the rights."

Really? Then how come intensity can produce the same sails? Did they buy the licence? Then they must be really very efficient in production if they sell the sails for less then 250 after having bought the license as well! :))
 
Our VP was explaining life to me a few weeks ago and he mentioned something that ought to be in this thread>>>

Copyrights and patents on products are there to protect the consumer as well as the producer.

Here in the US, if it has a Laser logo we know it is either aproved by Chip Johns himself or, if found out, somebody has to answer to Chip, his lawyers and even federal prosecutors..

Chip owns the copyright. The copyright is attached to a specific product line. Nobody else may represent his product as Chips product without Chips express written permission.

Say whatever you want about Chip and his desire to line his pockets; he absolutely warrants everything he sells.

The Laser logo means, "Chip Johns and the US government say it will work as represented."

As a result, the Laser copyright in NA is actually doing exactly as congress intended.
 
I am pretty sure they use a different material and they done have anything that says laser on it or has the logo so it is a totally different product and it isnt a laser sail its just a sail that happens to work on a laser.:)
 
So what would be wrong with using an aftermarket sail in a big race....and if you say unfair advantage then ask yourself why the "cheaper" sail is better. Is it planned obsolescense? Or just something else? :confused:
 
yes they did make them back in the early 80's but by now it wouldn't be very compettitive now if it's any newer it's not race legal. make sure to check for the red laser sticker
 
I saw a coloured sail today, red white and blue. It was an M-rig (Really, really old, wood blades...) :) I wouldn't mind seeing coloured sails making a comeback.
 
Several years ago I purchased a new spinnaker for OOD (Offshore One Design). Being unable to select a colour and being decidedly unsure about how any would look I went for plain old white. Later that year (when the rest of the new sails arrived) we took the boat out with the sailmaker to tune the rig. He came with somebody else's bright red spinnaker to try that as customer had been unsure about the shape. He commented that our white was the best choice as the coloured ones do not keep their shape as well when wet.


He "knew his stuff" (being the sail designer for one of the major international racing sail makers - UK loft) - I wonder if the same applies to Laser sail material.


Ian​
 
Deimos said:
He commented that our white was the best choice as the coloured ones do not keep their shape as well when wet.​

That's interesting but I can't imagine that that is true with modern technology. Besides, the sailors I know are such sticklers for performance that they'd have white spinnakers if it really made a difference. Has anybody else ever heard of this?
 
i have never heard about that but i can imagine the dying process could weakin the fibers used in the sail but as merrily said new technologies can probably overcome that.
 
Merrily said:
That's interesting but I can't imagine that that is true with modern technology. Besides, the sailors I know are such sticklers for performance that they'd have white spinnakers if it really made a difference. Has anybody else ever heard of this?


[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif]It was about 6 years ago. As a One Design class it was fairly open in terms of adopting new sail fabrics (i.e. generally new sail materials were approved pretty quickly) so the spinnaker material would have been pretty recent technology).[/FONT]​

Cannot remember the material weight but we were talking about the light-weight spinnaker for a 38 ft highish performance craft thus it was a decent sized sail. Maybe slight effects become that much greater when dealing with larger sail areas.


Another aspect I can assure you about is that staring at a white sail on a sunny day against a light sky background trying to keep the thing full and pulling optimally is not easy (even with sun glasses), particularly if you think that a reach can be for a long time (8 hrs. plus). Coloured spinnakers thus do have a distinct advantage in terms of seeing what they are doing that may well outweigh any fabric considerations.


But I still liked the white one (as I tended to helm and thus didn't have to watch it for too long). That said, I can sympathise and the one we had did have coloured tapes on the luff and leech which helped.


[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif]Ian[/FONT]​
 
My 1983 Laser "came with" (at least was sold well-used to me with) an orange/ yellow/ white sail which seems to have all the official logos and buttons. I bought an older boat because it was much less expensive for a "starter." I've since pretty much retired the sail (in favor of an Intensity practice one for the time being) because it did look pretty old, was developing holes all over the place, and in particular up at the top was being held together with duct tape, which made it so much harder to rig up, tape sticking on the mast, not wanting to slide all the way up.

laser2.jpg

I am from the greener end of the Laser spectrum, so I can't really speak for if the individual color "chunks" wear evenly or pull apart from each other at an unusual rate, at some elite racing level. However, from a recreational perspective, I did get several outings from the sail after my purchase, on a pretty old sail, so I almost think we're talking "performance characteristics" at some higher level, than how it holds up if you're just knocking around. And the facts that they used to make colored sails, people still sell them now after-market, and we're talking here on a few threads with some level of interest, suggests some level of interest in "other than white."

That being said, it also strikes me that some of the perception if not reality that "white suffices" may be driven by the racer stereotype of the average Laser owner. Lot of the club racer type boats go white sails. Sunfish and Hobies have selections of colored sails, though Sunfish has the white racing option, but perhaps that reflects the fact those are seen as more knockaround boats anyway (you can buy the white Sunfish sail if you're "serious").

Maybe it's been thrown out there and then we start talking about wear rates and such and it's like, we won't hear all this if we don't change. All the brouhaha with the other sail ideas bounced around, radial cut but standard size sails, etc., maybe that's caught this too.

And yet.........you look at America's Cup, Vendee Globe, Volvo Ocean Race.....they somehow manage colored sails. Personally, while I prefer my working Intensity to the old, tattered colored official one, I wouldn't have minded a choice and probably would have picked a decent color combo if available. [But then, that may reflect I'm so new and just knocking around that I'm not fully indoctrinated in caring if the multicolors would wear as well if I did ten races over a few days in a big regatta in heavy winds.....or a whole real racing season in that manner........which brings it full circle?]
 

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