Night of the Living Laser

Call it Night of the Living Laser. The boat’s been killed and come back from supposed death so many times it puts The Walking Dead and mummies to shame. It was due for another cycle, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s right on schedule. Nobody’s exactly saying death to the Laser, but it’s implied.

The villains previously were dubious management and financial downturns. This time it’s the evil RS Aero, Melges 14 and D-Zero supposedly driving a tiller extension through its heart. Surely it can’t withstand the onslaught of newer, faster and dare we say better boats. Especially if and when one of those others is chosen for the 2024 Olympics. We’ll see the Laser crushed and dumped on the heap of dated and discarded singlehanders like the Opti, Sunfish, OK Dinghy and Finn.

Wait. Those classes aren’t dead. In fact, far from it.

Ah, but this time after the sexy new boats drive that extension through its heart, the Laser will be starved to death by a lack of resources and attention from a primary builder, LaserPerformance. Seems LP has allowed supply chains to whither over the past few years, and now blame it on Bruce Kirby, the ILCA, Brexit and Trump (in the form of his trade war with China – bet you didn’t know he had it in for Laser too.) When my 7-year-old blames everyone else, I know it’s probably his fault. Lazy performance indeed.

OK, here we have the Laser, with a stake through its heart and starved so badly its silly little plastic traveler eyes have turned to dust. Dead. Finally. But one can ever be too sure, so let’s confuse those addled Laser sailors by coming up with new rigs so nobody knows what the hell is going on. (LP is also developing two of their own, the ARC rigs.) Should the Laser crawl up from the grave again, it won’t know where to turn.

So the end is near. Maybe we’ll see the occasional 1970s lime green Lasers with four-digit sail numbers getting dragged up on a beach somewhere. But that’ll be about it, right?

Wrong. Laser has been dead before. She knows her way back to the living.

Something about her won’t let her die. She’s a harsh taskmaster, one of the harshest. Even the best sailors sometimes come off the water after a frustrating day of Laser sailing muttering about how they can’t sail worth a s%*t. Compared to modern boats, the Laser is made of lead. The improvements over the years to the control lines and now sail and top section have made the boat much more user-friendly than the original, but even with a fancy new squaretop sail nobody really expects it to be as fast as one of the new boats.

But the Laser has that thing – a certain feel, a certain look – that’s kind of like magic. Few sailing experiences are as visceral as “getting it right” on a Laser. But that alone won’t keep it out of the grave.

Sailors will keep it out of the grave. And here’s how we’ll do it. We’ll embrace the new classes. What? More people sailing singlehanded dinghies is better. In Seattle we’ve seen the core of the Laser fleet move, en masse, to the RS Aero. That nearly, but didn’t (at least not yet), kill the Laser fleet here. But then some interesting things started happening. World class sailors like Carl Buchan, Jonathan and Libby McKee and Andy Mack reentered the singlehanded scene in RS Aeros. All of a sudden, singlehanding was in again. A few new Laser sailors have started to come out as well, and the better Aero sailors don’t denigrate the old Laser, they respect it for what it is. So, instead of an uninspired Laser class we now have a very active high-end RS Aero class and a Laser fleet that seems less threatening competitively and more appealing financially to newcomers. We share planning and resources with our friends who’ve moved on to Aeros and work together on regattas. We all sail under the Seattle Laser Fleet banner.

At this point it’s worth mentioning that West Coast Sailing, while fully embracing and pushing the sexy RS Aero, didn’t leave the Laser jilted in the rain on a corner. WCS continued to turn over every rock for every silly traveler eye out there so that we could continue racing.

But wait, there’s more. Don’t look now, but in our region (the Pacific Northwest) there are a lot of kids out there who are coming out of high school sailing programs. By working with the local high school, college and yacht club coaches and community sailing programs, the Seattle Laser Fleet has already seen growing participation. Kids, perhaps more than adults, can appreciate the simplicity, ruggedness and cheapness of the Lasers. Hey, it’s a chance to sail against your buddies, right, and anybody can find a Laser to sail.

And as far as us old guys go, there is simply nothing out there comparable to Lasers Masters sailing, especially for the Masters Worlds. You have more in common with that Ukranian on your weather hip that you do with 99 percent of the people in your home harbor – guaranteed.

I agree with Jean-Pierre Kiekens’ proposal published in Sailing Anarchy for us all to take a deep breath, but I don’t think it revolves around the Olympic status. The Laser will be around with or without the Olympics. As Kiekens pointed out, the sailors need to reconnect with ILCA and really determine where we want to go with rigs. And Lazy Performance has to get their act together with regards to parts. Wait, make that get their act together with regards to everything or get out of the way.

But in the meantime, they’re still great boats and there is still lots of good sailing left in them. I don’t agree with Kiekens that it’s time to unrig. Keep rigging, keep sailing and get those kids out there. It’s still a kick-ass boat.

Lasers seldom have names. But I might name mine Walking Dead. For the season at least.

–Kurt Hoehne, Laser sailor since 1978 and District 22 Secretary.