July 2010
New Fleet Captian Martin Mills has agreed to take over as Laser Fleet captain with immediate effect. He can be contacted on
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.
May 2010
(Almost) Free Laser Coaching See the Laser Fleet Training 2010 page for more details. Or contact Martin Mills by email to
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.
March 2010
Rule change for bailer repair Not excessively 'new' news this however ILCA rule 13 has been amended to allow you to use other replacement repair parts as long as they do not alter the function of the bailer. For all the info click here or for a link to the E-bay page to buy these click here. I will be fitting these to my boat as soon as the weather warms up as the O-rings do not pull the bailer flap shut properly (which is one source of the 'hum' you get when planing).
Training Courses are starting to fill up fast. There are still spaces on the 3rd April course. I do need to know by Saturday 27th March if you want to come so I can ensure there are enough instructors available. Please drop me an email if you want to attend. For those attending there will be a short survey going out so I have an idea of what you want to cover (aside from what is already in the list). For the 8th May day we will also be going through this exercise so Brett knows what to plan for us.
Fleet racing and Wednesday nights:With the clocks changing this coming weekend that can only mean 2 things for the club racing calendar, The imminent start to the Spring and Twilight racing. The Twilight starts on the 31st March with the Spring Series on the 11th April (because the first Sunday in April is Easter Sunday we have the Mereke Easter Egg races). I was encouraged to see some 10 Lasers rigged and racing over the weekend (including your glorius leader but I must confess I was racing my 8.1 as it was a handicap race). There was some good racing throughout the fleet with some new faces and the welcome return of some older faces
February 2010
Club hosted training dates are now finalised and the Activate Your Laser workshop will be taking place at WPNSA on the 27th.
January 2010
Regional Training at Grafham with head coach Jon Emmett. For those who cannot wait until May for our own club coaching day this is definitely worth attending. I am unable to attend myself as I am at the Active Laser launch event and an instructor preassesment the following day! Full information
click here.
Announcement of new ActiveLaser scheme being jointly run by the RYA and LaserPerformance. This scheme is aimed at revitalising club Laser fleets and encouraging those boats that never move out on to the water. There is a luanch event on 27th February 2010 down a WPNSA that is being hosted by SailLaser. Stu Bryant (a new member of the fleet and main committee member) and myself are hoping to attend. There is a prize of a days coaching with Paul Goodisonfor the club who comes up with the most innovative way to 'Activate' their Laser fleet so get your thinking caps on, no idea is a bad idea aside from one that is never put forward!
November 2009
The jury is still out on this one. There are those who love them those who hate them. Of the club boats Stuart Akers has purchased one and had some issues fitting it to his boat as the mounting holes appear to be in the wrong place. My personal view is that it looks much better than the original part and should last a lot longer if the fitting issues are resolved.
An update on this. For Christmas I got the new brake an I have the same issue fitting it as Stuart. Looking round at a couple of forums it would appear that most people have to re-drill the hull to get this to fit properly. I have heard back from Laser performance who say they are not aware of any issues with these fitting boats. Their advice is that it is perfectly fine to redrill the hull (and fill the old holes of course). If you have a problem fitting one complain!
Summer 2009
This is, in my opinion, a major step forward for the Laser in terms of equipment. The blocks are significantly more expensive than the Holt parts that they have replaced but they flow a lot better and look much more hard wearing. The fact that the traveller blocks are fixed together means no more issues with the blocks folding together at inopportune moments. The only downside I have seen is that they tend to creep away from the corner of the boat so you need to use a foot to push them back to where they should be when going upwind.
