One more thing: Does anyone out there actually race old Lasers, without the trimming upgrades, successfully?
One more thing: Does anyone out there actually race old Lasers, without the trimming upgrades, successfully?
I saw that guy on a Green Boat. Was on a pier watching the boats approach off the starting line was blowing 18 or so with gusts. Anyway this guy goes by and there's a humming sound comming off his sail as his leach was fluttering wildly - he also couldn't point with the rest of the fleet. Was shocked to see that he did relatively well for the regatta
In most fleets and in most conditions, the age of the hull doesn't matter too much. Hulls can go soft or put on weight with a lot of use but you have to be sailing very well or have a real lemon before that makes much of a difference. More important are good foils, a good sail, and a straight mast. An older sail can be made to go fast if you understand enough about sail shape, but the same sailor with a new sail should always be much faster.
The new rigging is easier to use, but that only makes it fractionally faster if at all. Robert Scheidt used the old vang to win the Gold Medal at the Athens Olympics. The guy that just came second in the Masters fleet at the Worlds was using the old vang too.
If the new rigging is only "fractionally" faster why does the vast majority use it? Are we just a bunch of lemmings?
If you have to put your foot on the boom to bend it down to get enough vang on, 1. that takes skill, 2. that takes strength 3. that takes flexibility.
In most conditions, b-to-block vang is plenty...and you can put that amount of tension on just by sheeting in to b-to-block and then cleating the vang.
But not all. Leech flutter is slow and there are, (at least for me) many times when just block to blok will not stop leech flutter, but the new vang can get the leech tension needed to stop it. Not with the old vang. At least not me.
I never had to do this with the old vang, never had any problems with it
If the end of the leech is attached to the end of the boom, which is on the deck when you are b-to-block, how can you increase leech tension by adding more vang when you are already sheeted block to block? It would seem to me that adding more vang might increase mast bend, but since the position of the end of the boom is fixed on the deck when you are b-to-block that would loosen the leech.
Check out the bend in the boom of someone using the updated vang in a blow.
If you have not sailed withthe new vang ina blow it's hard to describe, but when you are 2 blocked and that leech flutter starts you just ean forward and pull MORE vang on. Leech flutter goes away.
It works.
I never had to do this with the old vang, never had any problems with it
If you have not sailed withthe new vang ina blow it's hard to describe, but when you are 2 blocked and that leech flutter starts you just ean forward and pull MORE vang on. Leech flutter goes away.
It works.
I'll take a stab at this. I'm no engineer, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
The downforce from the vang pulling on the boom transfers directly to the end of the boom which is where the leech is attached via the clew. The downward force is tied directly to the leech, which connects to the top of the mast.
So, all of the force used to create mast bend is through the leech, but the vang in the lever.
If you draw a scetch of the boom, mast and vang and then draw arrows indicating the direction of the forces involved when vang is applied it helps you to see how the leech does this. At least that's how I see it........
I think the problem is the assumption that a tighter leech will flutter less. I would have thought that a tighter leech would flutter more.
Pulling the vang beyond block to block (when the mainsheet is block to block) will bend the mast more, which moves the draft further back and opens the leech. An open leech has less tension and depowers the sail.
So, pulling on more vang may well reduce leech flutter, but at the expense of power. A pretty sail is not necessarily a faster sail (in the Laser world especially).
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I started this thread after reading the "Understand the un-stayed rig" article on roostersailing.com....