Is a Laser the Right Boat for Me? - Part 1, Hull Shape

I met my first boat beside a busy residential street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There, on a small galvanized trailer with a “For Sale” sign leaning against it, sat a 16 foot long, pristinely-white, fiberglass hull with the most seductive hard chine I’d ever seen, and I didn’t even know that the molded angle in the hull was called a chine.

 The hull looked ready for action, but solid. This wasn’t a rounded, have-your-way-with-me shape; the flares and faces of the boat suggested a hull that could conquer water. The angles jumped and the white was so white because the deck was a convex of wonderful, deep, rich mahogany plywood.

I’d never sailed before and buying that English-built Wayfarer was as much an act of passion as it was an act of faith in aesthetics. I didn’t have the slightest understanding that round bottoms were initially tippy, but ultimately very stable, and that this flat bottom boat would feel very stable until it suddenly didn’t, and then it would have to be turned back upright.

There are things you can know to guide your choice of boats, but liking to look at it will probably be an important issue. What I want to share in this series of articles are some of the other things you may want to consider about owning a Laser to assure that your relationship is long and happy.

Boats force you to make some tough trade-offs. It reminds me a bit of choosing how to invest 401K or IRA savings. What’s your risk tolerance? In the case of sailboats it’s often about speed or stability – what’s your need for excitement? What’s your willingness to get wet?

For a boat to be fast it has to scrimp on stability. If you are going ocean crossing you don’t scrimp on stability unless you carry a great life raft. When you’re racing on lakes or near to shore you can afford to trade off some stability to gather in a little excitement. Since stability can equal ending up in the water at times you might think of this trade-off as the dry vs. wet decision.

A boat gets to be fast by being lighter vs. heavier, dragging less of its hull around through the water and by having a well designed and big enough sail to capture more power from the wind. And, when the wind is up, a flatter bottom will reward you with the ability to plane on top of the water like a power boat.

Let’s quickly walk through how a Laser’s hull shape and weight affect its ability to sail in light breezes and generate speed in heavier wind.

A light boat will move through the water with less power. The initial producer of power is the amount of wind. In the United States in the summer, most sailing is done with moderate to light breezes. The exception is thunderstorms, when you won’t be sailing anyway. So, a lighter boat will move more easily in the kind of winds most of us sail in. (You San Francisco sailors stop gloating.) A Laser weighs just 125 pounds fully rigged.

The primary thing that slows a boat down is dragging its hull through the water. Less hull below the water means less drag. In heavier winds the power is available to overcome more drag so it is a bit less important.

The Laser has little below the water, but the nice thing is that it’s flexible about reducing even that little bit. In light winds you can tip it so that less than half of its normal below-the-water profile is still in the water. In heavier winds, when the power is available to overcome more drag, the wide flat part can sit back in the water and you are ready to plane.

More wind produces more power to move the boat, but the boat needs a sail to “catch” the power. The amount of sail you need is variable according to how heavy the boat is and how much drag the hull creates. The Laser has a reasonable size rig to move the boat in very light wind. I have had my Laser moving along with a tiny wake in winds where you can’t see any water ripples.

And the nice thing is that the Laser has different sail sizes so that if you’re over 155 pounds you can have a standard size sail, if you’re less than that you can sail with a smaller radial sail. And you can change to suit the conditions of the day.

The Laser has a flat bottom, which means it will plane like a power boat in a modest breeze. A hull that sets deep in the water needs to plow the water out of its way in order to move forward. This process limits the speed severely. If there is enough power available, remember power is wind strength captured in an efficient sail, a boat with a flat bottom can slide up on to the water and plane along with very little drag.

One of the joys of Laser sailing is to get a nice breeze and plane right past bigger boats that are using their hulls to plow troughs in the water. It is amazing to be on a sailboat and to not be able to hear the wind because of the noise of water spraying in your face. To be skipping across the waves and grinning at yourself.

And that brings us back to the wet part! On a boat like the Laser, the sailor’s weight becomes a major stabilizing or destabilizing factor. You can imagine how if the boat weighs just 125 pounds and you weigh that or more, where you sit will dramatically tip the boat this way or that.

And tipping all the way over is one way to tip it. But the same weight will also stabilize the boat when you sit so that your weight contracts the push from the sail. By using your weight correctly, “hiking out,” you can use a bigger sail in more wind and that’s when you really get up and fly, and the faster you go the more stable the boat is.

So if you get a Laser, you need to assume you will be moving around a lot, more on this in another section. And if you move to the wrong place you may just tip over, “dump” the boat. Now the boat turns back over fairly easy, but you can see where the wet part comes from. Even the best sailors tip over occasionally, so Laser class racing rules require every sailor to wear a life jacket at all times.

My first sail in a Laser was a wet one. I flipped it over about four times in the first couple of hundred feet. Then I got its balance figured out and kept it up right most of the rest of the four hour sail. One of the first lessons you learn on a Laser is to get it back upright when you’re in the water, and after a while you will find you can react so quickly that you can tip it over and not even get in the water.

So think about your priorities. Do you want a stable dry boat, or are you willing to get wet occasionally for the reward of speed and a boat that moves along nicely in light air?

Also consider that to get wet and still be comfortable you will have to have a selection of sailing gear to match the weather. Most of us have at least a pair of neoprene “hiking” pants that keep us warm in cold water and cushion us as we sit on the deck, a waterproof “spray top” to protect our upper body from the wind when we’re wet and a pair of “hiking boots” to warm and protect our feet. In the middle of summer on a lake a bathing suit may be all a young, warm-blooded person needs.

If you love your minivan and can’t imagine riding a motorcycle or convertible sports car, you want to carefully consider whether a Laser reflects your “excitement” level.

Part 2 will cover the level of athleticism needed.