The boat with no name

Peter Bentley and Gerald New take Laser's new sportsboat for a spin.

Sails up and away from the dock, the boat felt immediately brisk and responsive. With both Adrian Hart and Rob Andrews looking apprehensive we bore away into the relative shelter of Southampton Water. Two sail reaching the boat was certainly fast and responsive with manageable loads on both the main and jib sheets. But how would she go with the kite? My initial request to get it up was met with the look that parents reserve as a response to particularly daft questions from their children. Further pleading eventually saw the big yellow spinnaker out of the bag and we were off......

This really is one fast little boat and though I can not vouch for the accuracy of the TackTick speedo, we quickly saw 17 knots on the clock. The big rudder has the boat running as if on rails. With Hart keen for us not to break things we didn't try anything fancy, but boy did we arrive at Weston pretty quickly. Though seriously big, the foot of the kite has been kept high and visibility downwind is not too much of a problem, at least in a breeze. In lighter airs with the kite sheeted in it could be another story. We didn't have any light winds so the jury is still out on that one.

Upwind, it is a different story and as with all small non planing boats, speed is very much limited by waterline length. Despite a short chop starting to build against the fist of the ebb tide the boat remained dry and moved easily through the waves. The powerful backstay and well mannered mainsheet makes for an easily controlled main, while the jib can be precision trimmed with the two-to-one sheeting system. Quite why nobody had though to use the upside down kicker system (Gnav as Laser call it) on a keel boat before will forever remain a mystery, but suffice it to say the system works well and frees up so much space for the crew in tacks and gybes that you do have to wonder why it was not tried before.

During the course of the development process, most of the fitting have been replaced at least once and the boat now sports an almost 100 percent Harken fit-out. If it had been a production boat I would have said everything worked well. For a prototype, it really was remarkably well sorted. My usual niggle about loose rudder fitting applied as normal, with the lower pintle well and truly loose by the end of our sail. Okay so we didn't exactly break it but we have given the Laser boys something to beef up before the boat goes into production.

So where's the catch you may ask. It all sounds too good to be true. Not having had the opportunity to test the boat in the light stuff, it's impossible to tell how she will perform in less wind. The powerful hull form and big foils lead one to think she could be sticky in light airs. The prototype has come out right on design-weight but Laser it must be said, do have a history of not quite getting it right where the weight of their production boats is concerned. Provided Laser see weight as a priority, then my guess would be that the performance will outstrip any small keel boat (except perhaps the K6) up to about twice the price. And talking of price, all those lovely Harken fitting look expensive too. The good news is that they work. Attempts by the bean-counting contingent to reduce cost with inferior fittings should be resisted.

Looking at the boat it would be easy to assume that it was just a little mini-1720. After all, both boats come from the same designer and they do bear a remarkable resemblance. Wrong. Somewhere in its development the 1720 was allowed to get heavy with big sails, big loads and a requirement for a big crew. For now at least the new Laser boat is light, lightly loaded and easily crewed by just three average people. It seems that there will be a crew weight limit and perhaps a weight equalisation system similar to that used in the Laser 4000. As with much on this boat nothing has finally been decided yet.

And who might this little pocket rocket appeal to? My guess would be a broad range of people from worn out old dinghy sailors moving up to keel boat sailors moving down. History of course is well set against Laser with no small three person keel boat successfully introduced to the British market in the last 80 years (and no, before you write in, the Etchells and others don't count as small). I'd like to think I might win my bet with Adrian that they will not sell 100 in the first year but on reflection I suspect I might be wrong.



Pages three and four.... the boat in detail.