Preparation time

LETLMT

Member
I keep my Laser by the water on a dolly. I have it covered, with boom all rigged. It still takes me a good 30 minutes of hard work to get the boat off of the dolly, sail on the mast, mast in the boat, sail attached to the boom, and the other miscellaneous adjustments needed before actually getting out for a sail.

This preparation time and effort stops me from going out sailing as much as I would like, because unless the wind is looking good it is not worth the effort for a potentially short sail because of not enough wind or too gusty to have fun. I live on a lake with fluky winds.

How long does it take other people to get on the water from arriving at the boat to starting to sail?

Are there any tips on shortcuts that I can take to leave the boat more prepared so that the set up time is shortened?

One of the hardest parts is to get the clew attached to the boom. I have a shackle on the outhaul instead of the hook. Which one do people find easier?
 
30 minutes isn’t bad. Here are some ideas for reducing rigging time though.

1. Use an old practice sail and just leave it on the mast rolled up. Take the battens out of course and leave them in the cockpit.
2. Having the sail on the mast allows you to also leave the Vang and Cunningham attatched.
3. Use a Velcro clew strap.
4. Leave main sheet attached to it the boom and the cockpit block.
5. Only put the top cover on. No need for bottom cover unless on the road.
6. Leave blades in the cockpit and fix rudder in the down position and leave tiller attached
7. Sleep In your hiking boots and life jacket. If you drink enough alcohol this will happen naturally.
8. Don’t take anything down. Just drag the boat up the beach and flip it over under a tree. Maybe tie it to the tree just to be safe.
9. Hire a servant to go down and rig the boat for you.
 
It still takes me a good 30 minutes of hard work
I've never timed myself, but half an hour sounds like an awfully long time to rig a Laser. I'm guessing that you do something unnecessary/impractical and/or have to do multiple tries before succeeding at a certain step of the process. You specifically mentioned that...
One of the hardest parts is to get the clew attached to the boom. I have a shackle on the outhaul instead of the hook. Which one do people find easier?
The hook, definitely. I have no idea why a shackle would be better in any way here. Actually, as you're not racing, I can recommend using the Harken hook and tying it semi-permanently to the boom with the included piece of line. Gets rid of the clew strap.

_
 
Shackle. I've seen a hook come off in the week before the UK Open in Plymouth. Reason? Somehow, the bungee cord lost its power to pull the sail forward. The hook lost its tension and worked itself out of the loop.

At lot of time is lost mounting the vang block to the lower part of the mast; that small ring has to be inserted to keep the pin in place. There are other, faster methods/devices
 
30 minutes isn’t bad. Here are some ideas for reducing rigging time though.

1. Use an old practice sail and just leave it on the mast rolled up. Take the battens out of course and leave them in the cockpit.
2. Having the sail on the mast allows you to also leave the Vang and Cunningham attatched.
3. Use a Velcro clew strap.
4. Leave main sheet attached to it the boom and the cockpit block.
5. Only put the top cover on. No need for bottom cover unless on the road.
6. Leave blades in the cockpit and fix rudder in the down position and leave tiller attached
7. Sleep In your hiking boots and life jacket. If you drink enough alcohol this will happen naturally.

Jason, did you peak inside my tent when you couldn't sleep at the Kerr Lake event?
 
I've seen a hook come off in the week before the UK Open in Plymouth. Reason? Somehow, the bungee cord lost its power to pull the sail forward. The hook lost its tension and worked itself out of the loop.
I'd expect this to be extremely rare. The hook should stay in even without an inhaul (which I'd be tempted to leave out for recreational-only sailing), because there should be enough tension on the leech so that the clew isn't pulled backward by anything. Solutions: use a hook with a latch, and/or rig the vang so it never goes completely loose.

At lot of time is lost mounting the vang block to the lower part of the mast
That should take less than a minute, and why would one take it off in the first place?

_
 
It takes me more time to squeeze into all my Zhik gear than rig the boat.

Leaving everything pretty much rigged with sail rolled around the mast and top cover on is the fastest way to go on day 2 of a regatta.

if you can leave your boat that way then it should take only about 10 minutes to rig.

For me getting the covers off, boat off the trailer and onto the dolly and then rigged can take 20-30 minutes.
 
Most sailors remove the vang to prevent -what's called in Dutch with some understatement- 'proletarian shopping'. Theft. Not everybody moving around the boat park has good intentions as we noticed in Kiel last Summer. Two vangs and a tiller extension were gone from boats parked on the pavement near the slipways.

Fast pin should be okay. Looks tidy as well.
 
LETLMT, 30 minutes sounds long to me too. Rigging takes me about 15 min. My Laser is on a dolly in my boathouse near the shore and covered, but most of the other steps that I follow seem similar to what you do. I use a shackle and Velcro band at the outhaul and I leave the vang attached to the mast, but store the sail rolled in a bag. Battens stay in the sail. I remove all the spars, sheet, foils and store them separately from the hull. All of that stuff is very close at hand, though, so there is little to no walking around to fetch the various items. I wouldn't expect attaching the outhaul to take much time. I spend more time threading the outhaul control line and the cunningham through their blocks and cleats.

Your question has stimulated my thoughts about how I might streamline my setup, especially since I'm primarily a recreational sailor and can ignore some rules if need be.

And this whole issue of setup, as you mentioned, is a frustrating part of sailing. If I could be happy with a Sunfish how much easier it would be! Decades ago I regularly hauled a Hobie 16 (a simpler boat than many) by trailer to some lake and spent about an hour rigging that thing, then another hour undoing the rigging after sailing. That got old fast (so did I).

That 15 minutes definitely does not include the time to get dressed (squeeze into hiking shorts, etc.). :)
 
As a trailer-sailor, it takes me about 15 minutes to offload, 15 minutes to rig, and 15 minutes to get suited up. Same amount of time to undress, de-rig, and load up after coming ashore.
 
I'm new to Lasers (probably up to a dozen riggings now?) and my trailer-to-water time continues to improve. I don't think it's anywhere near 30 minutes.
Most of my time is wasted unstrapping my rubbish dolly from my rubbish trailer that it doesn't really fit, and my bundle of spars from the deck on top of the cover. I live 2km from the lake and my boat is too old and cheap (and broken) to bother paying for yard storage at the club.
Once the cover (top only) is off...
Mast together, sail unfolded and slid on (battons stay in the sail, I just roll-fold it down the leech, maybe I'll look after a sail better if I get a better one), stand the mast in the hull.
Vang on to the tang. I don't have a speed pin, so I use a standard shackle with the pin through the holes.
My outhaul primary and outhaul release shock cord live on the boom, and my clew strap lives on the sail. I use a quick-release shackle on the outhaul to the clew. My outhaul primary is pretty short, so with the running pulley bottomed out at the fairlead the sail is held securely, just a bit slacker than full-off sailing tension. So, boom-on is just a matter of putting it on the pin, catching the flapping clew strap and wrapping it on the boom, then snapping the outhaul shackle on to the clew. Vang key in, a bit of vang tension so it doesn't all flog and fall apart, and that's done.
Forward outhaul pulley luggage-tags on to the mast. Outhaul secondary (and Cunningham secondary) live threaded on the deck so it's as simple as threading outhaul secondary through the forward pulley, the running pulley, and in to the boom cleat to tie off.
Cunningham primary threads through the cringle and clips on to a snap hook attached to the top of my vang block. Cunningham secondary (lives on the deck) threads up and down through the two pulleys on the end of the primary and one attached to the top of the vang block. Bowline on the end of it and snap in to the same snap hook as the primary (at the top of the vang fitting - my vang fitting is a bit complicated but I never disassemble it so it's simple to rig).
Mainsheet lives in the cockpit, still threaded through the ratchet block. Run the free end through the boom and traveller blocks and it's done. Traveller lives on the boat.
Rudder on, tiller in, bung in (!), launch. Assuming I slept in my sailing kit.
Can't be more than 15 minutes in that process.
Of course if it's not going to be sailed for a while I'll strip the lines off the boat and store them in the shed out of the weather. Re-threading them must take another minute...
 
I timed myself and its 15 minutes.

This thread did spur me to make a few mods (not sure if they are racing legal, but that's irrelevant to me) that at least make rigging easier and a little faster. With a few snap shackles I don't have to tie any knots except for the rudder down haul, which I guess I could leave tied as well.
 
On day 2 of a regatta it takes me 5 minutes to rig. However, the mast is together with sail rolled around it and all lines are attached to the boom as well as rudder, tiller. Steps to rig are, 1-remove top cover, 2-unroll sail/put battens in, 3- Attach boom/vang, 4- rig mast part of Cunningham/outhaul, 5-launch. (of course putting sailing/racing gear on takes a bit longer, but if all I was putting on was a lifejacket it would ad no time).
 

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