Tuesday, August 18, 2015

L'Opti or the Laser 3.3

I don't know how I missed this but several years ago, sailing coach Dan Brandt at Richmond Yacht Club introduced a Laser with an Opti rig. I would imagine Richmond Yacht Club, being just off to one side of the very windy and choppy Berkeley Circle on San Francisco Bay, would find a very depowered Laser of great use for their junior sailors. Come to think of it, at this time in my life, this is just my speed for racing a Laser in anything over twenty knots.



More info on the L'Opti can be found here.

Also, at about the same time the L'Opti came out (2011) there was, that year, another performance rig introduced for a Laser.

2 comments:

Alden Smith said...

I think the Laser with the Opti rig is fantastic - it has all the logic of small yacht tender dinghies with a small sail - pleasant un-hassled sailing.

I am not so sure about not sharing the secret location and contents of the radical unkj rigged Laser you featured in your other post. If everyone got to know this information they all might want one and that may well be a good thing!

Tweezerman said...

Alden,

When I did that post on the junk-rigged Laser, there were strong rumors that Laser-Performance was close to introducing a "more modern" Laser sail using better cloth and radial cut. Four years later that "more modern" Laser sail has yet to appear. That post was tongue-in-cheek, implying the "more modern" Laser sail was in fact a junk rig with a boom quite high up. I have no idea where the fellow who did that rig is located or where he was sailing.