Recent content by Dave Kirkpatrick

Westport is one of the prettiest places anywhere. There is a town ramp "downtown," such as downtown is. The issue with sailing at Westport is that your better launches are inside the river, which is a crazy sail out, with TONS of current. You may find you are best off going to Sakonnet...

Purely color. The coloring agent is just powder that gets added to the mix, and has no impact on strength. Every action spawns rumours in Laser supply.

I'd be sort of surprised if APS still has black ones. The difference is that the black ones have a small screw holding the block together. The screw has no structural purpose or benefit. It just pulls the cheeks together. The blue blocks are riveted together. The rivet goes all the way...

The cubitainer caps are indeed white. If you are totally sweating it you could put another one in there. Lasers are pretty bouyant - the deck's core alone will float the whole boat easily.

Very funny.

Yes, yes they are. Shove them through the inspection port but keep the top accessable, then blow them up, cap them and try to shove them around until they get stuck somewhere. Then repeat. There are 3 big and 3 small ones in each boat as supplied. You'll never get the small ones to go behind...

There are six "Cubitainers" (think packable jerry jugs) in modern Lasers. 3 big ones are in front of the cockpit, three small ones in back. They are blown up and installed in the hull before the deck goes on. They aren't inflated to high pressure since they might pop or blow the screw tops...

No, I am not going to give out numbers. I will tell you that North and Hyde voluntarily use less than half of the spec range that the Laser Class allows for sail cloth. As for Brent Benson's statements that the sailmakers use inferior cloth, I hope (and believe) that he is knowledgeable...

<<so basically I spend a lot of time reaching around, sailing upwind with the blocks 8" apart>> Which is pretty darn close to exactly what you should do. The ideal is to beam reach back and forth in 8-10 knots of breeze. The amount of load on a sail is not inconsequential. You want to "load...

The instruction sheet that comes with both the Performance Upgrade and new Pro model boats from Vanguard should be quite clear, but here we go: You have in the kit a 13' or so (I'm not looking at a contents list right now)long piece of pre-stretch, a 13' (or so) piece of 12 strand dyneema...

Just got back from registration day at Cedar Point. At last count: 94 Full Rigs 54 Radials 7 4.7s Many of the big hitters are there. CPYC seems to have done a great job organizing. After a shower during the skippers meeting, a huge rainbow appeared over the sound. Apparently this is a...

You aren't allowed to use them if they didn't come with your boat. If you have an old boat that came with them, they are legal for use on that boat - you can not get an old boat with wood blades and then transfer the blades to a new hull. DK

It seems to be a good fit for a lot of junior programs and sailors. Kids like them. It took three weeks shy of forever to get the word out about Radials and get people onto that, now look what's happened with them. We're all just trying to push it along on the 4.7. A case of the Class and...

You could fit a Pico sail on a Radial rig. I've never tried it and can't tell you whether it will be any good or not, but it will fit the rig.

Vanguard and North Sails will be providing 10 Laser 4.7 demo rigs for sailors to use at North Americans from June 16 to 19 at Cedar Point YC. The sailor will be responsible for supplying hull, blades, lines, boom, top mast, ratchet, hiking strap, etc. We will supply the sail, lower mast and...