Laser Cruising - furling and luggage

hambleturtle

New Member
Has anyone any suggestions about what to do with your Laser sail when you've stopped at a pontoon or beached the boat for a bit?

I've done a couple of recent trips where I've not known what to do with my (fairly ancient) sail and have just had to detach it from the boom and leave it flapping. The first time I'd just sailed to the next harbour along the coast and only stopped to get an ice cream, but last week I popped over to a pub on the Isle of Wight for lunch. It seemed pretty unkind leaving the sail flapping but the battens stopped me furling it.

Has anyone come up with semi flexible battens that will bend when you wrap the sail around the mast but will hold the sail in some sort of shape when you're sailing. Or has anyone tried sails cut to not need battens? Or...?

On a related note does anyone sell, or have plans for, a luggage net to hold stuff on the deck in front of the mast? I tied my bag between the mast and the painter but it wasn't pretty or streamlined, and a net might be good to hold a bag and a couple of fenders (I could possibly even take a paddle then :) ).
 
For the batten problem, why don't you try and tip the boat (while it's fully rigged) take out the battens and then wrap the sail around? I've heard of some transport solutions with velcro infront of the mast, but I'm not too sure how that would work/ hold.
 
Hmm, tipping the boat to get to the battens would work sometimes - I'd be happy doing it on a sand or shingle beach but less happy on mud. It's not really an option if I'm using a pontoon (unless there are two boats out and we take it in turns to lay the boat on it's side in the water while the other boat retrieves the battens :) ).

If anyone can remember any links to luggage solutions I'd be interested - I'd not want to do any permanent hull modifications as it's a club boat but it'd always be useful to see what others have done.
 
You can reduce the flapping of the sail by leaving it hooked up to the boom, with medium vang tension on, and pull the mainsheet off the boom so the rigged sail is free to swing and so the mainsheet doesn't catch on the back corner of the deck.

This works quite well in winds up to 20knots and is usually how you see Laser's being towed as well.
 
Hey mate,
Check out on google..."round Britain in a laser" for his stowage methods. Hooked bungee cargo net with hooks under the gunnel
 

Back
Top