Probably the all-time favorite high performance one-design
on Wednesday March 28, 2007 10:47PM
Over 190,000 have been sold since 1969.
The 12 pages cover the intoduction of "The Weekender" and ends with an article by Dick Tillman, one of the first sailors to write a book on "Laser Sailing". Dick's subject is "The anti-aging antidote" in which he describes the regimen some recent Laser Masters world champions adopted to become first in class. Imagine training every day for a year! And one item in Dick's article is a box titled "Best of the Masters Events" which includes the Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters which ran for the 25th time at Fishing Bay last September.
The Laser can be sailed with three different sized sails, the 4.7 for the lightest weight racers, primarily Juniors moving up from Optis. Some 10 years ago I talked over the internet with a perpetual world champion, Colin Lovelady, from Perth in Western Australia. Colin was concerned about the limited use of the 4.7 and had seen it used in the Arabian Gulf with two juniors aboard; it was too much for one to right the boat after a capsize. The Laser Radial and the full rig are for sailors who weigh over 120 lbs and both are used in the Olympic Games; the radial as the single handed dinghy for women and the full rig for men. The relatively low cost of the Laser and it's ready availability throughout the world lead to it replacing the Europe for women in the 2004 Athens games.
If you haven't tried a Laser don't wait, the club owns four you can use if you get there early enough. One of the builders adverts some 8-10 years ago said very simply "don't wither your life away sitting on the rail".