Fun with Laser mods, making it more friendly to use.

Riv

Active Member
I look after 5 Lasers for my club here in the UK. We don't race, they are all just used for fun sailing mostly in good conditions. Many of our older members don't use them as they find them uncomfortable and difficult due to the low boom and the mainsheet catching on the transom problem. (None of our other boats do this so it's a nasty suprise)

So I set out to solve these problems on our oldest boat.

1) I took 36cm off the leach. Boom is now nice and high (I recut the sail and a kind member sewed it up)
2) Used a clew ring instead of an eye. It's much easier to clip onto the Harken boom sleeve (all our boats have these) and it's much cheaper than an eye.
2) I moved the traveveller 9" forwards ( drilled two 5mm holes in the gunwale for a rope loop as a fairlead)

Boat sails well in the 10mph I've been out in so far, the sail is about 4sqft smaller but I'm sure no one will notice.
Main does not wrap around the transom
I've added a snap shackle to the traveller as a an emergency bail out.
I added a newer XD vang.
I added a new toestrap adjuster from Rooster. Works really well.

The traveller no longer needs to be bar tight.
No problem steering with the slightly restricted angle due to the traveller movement forwards.
So far so good. I'll see what the members do with it. We also have other normal full size rigs. They can choose.

Boat looks much more modern now, I was out with an Aero and they look similar from a distance.
 

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Fantastic work. I hope the more mature crowd at your club will appreciate it; I certainly do!
If I were any closer, I would come right over to try your set-up, but I am on the other side of the water and the coronavirus doesn't encourage traveling.
 
Ingenuity, creativity and adaptation go a long way in this world without a lot of gratitude, thanks to people like you Riv. Fantastic job. Brilliant work to get people to enjoy sailing. I say we all lift a dram in your honor...Cheers!
 
Thanks for the positive replies. Went out yesterday, F4 (many small whitecaps) sail is really old and the camber of the sail was well back despite as much downhaul as I could get on. If folk like the basic principle I'll recut a slightly more modern one. Traveller length needs lots of experimenting with as it has to be really loose, about a foot or so above the deck in the middle to get leach tension and the boom far enough out.
 

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