Brave?

For years the single handed dinghy market has been, to my mind anyway, really simple. Plastic learing toys for kids, a fewy loony high performance boats like my old RS600 and the medium "good all rounder" market, which I admit there's ample selection of desiagns. In in reaility there isn't its a no brainer. get a Laser.

Lasers are (for my non sailing mates who are acedently reading this) cheap, reasonably quick and within reach of a lot of people's ability and asperations. When I say cheap - by the time you get down to a second hand Brighton Beach special they are about the cheapest boat you can get.

Lasers are all over the world in little places nobody's ever heard of they're ubiqitus. The Fijian kid I went up against a few months back? We were racing lasers. There old, but It would be imposible for me to recomend a mid range or mid perfomace single hander of any other design. It just makes no sense. If I were a dinghy manufacture I'd write that market off.

RS - Who I admit to liking, they're not perfect but by and large the make good boats and test them BEFORE they sell them, which makes a change from certain other manufactures. RS have launched the RS100 - a while ago I was distracted by oceans and roos. They have decided to take on the Laser market. Brave, very brave.

The RS100 has 2 rigs (now three) of varying sizes, like the laser/radial/4.7 rigs. They're even refering to the small rig as radial The varialbe sail size is definalty aimed at the laser markets.

A quick troll of the Internet to work out the most popular sailing dinghies of all time turned into a mess. Some very famous designs like the Mirror and Optimist were oftern home built and so numbers aren't what you'd call firm. The Laser however is up there in the top few, depending on whose numbers you use. But to put RS's bravery into perspective arround 200,000 Lasers have been built. That's a lot. Guessing from sail numbers only about 400 RS600's have been built (my class). Since Laser is quite a restricted, measured and Olympic regulated class I'ts numbers are probably acurate. For instance the Hobie 16 which is undoubtably the best selling cat of all times exact numbers I frankly doubt. They've never to my mind had a properly establised sail numbering scheme and are made by 2 separeate companies of the same name (Hobie US and Europe).

Super fast dInghies like the 600 MPS and RS700 have limitted appeal. For a long time now the trapeze has dominated performance dinghy sailing, however boats where the driver trapezes are and have always been a minority, something that shows no sign of changing.

Building a faster boat than the mass produced laser is not terribly difficult. But doing it comes at a price. The laser breaks down into small easily handled bits, the mast is in 2 halves, just round ally tubes. It can be - and frequnetly is, stored in racks towed 6 at a time in a stack or car topped. Moslty becasue of its prodution numbers. To build a faster boat, or a signifiantly faster one you really need a conventional stayed rig - so you can't stack it. A bigger hull, so back to one or 2 boats per trailor or buy a trailor not a roof rack. That's going to cost a lot more in terms of money, storage space rigging time - you name it. Hence why the laser's so dominant.

On top of that the laser is a fun little boat. Even those of us with asperations will jump in one for a sail if we get the chance. Its not perfect, phisicaly its hard work to hike, its sail shape is limmited by its cheap mast. Its a bit poorly behaved downwind where it death rolls. But it was built as a car toppable boat and launched in 1970. For a 40 year old design they are minor problems, still boat design, materials and so on have all come on in the last 40 years, maybe its time for a breakthrough mid market single hander. RS clearly think so, the RS100 is shipping to the US and Austraila in numbers by the sound of it - something RS is not noted for, usually they're a UK only manufacturer.

I wish them luck, I can't afford one at £7,850 (versus £4,389 for laser), but given its got a carbon firbre mast the differnece isn't as big as I'd expected. Any way I'd want an all out flying machine, and with the laser's handicap at 1082 for a full rig and 1106 for a radial  the RS100 at 1005 big rig and 1014 radial. That's signigicanlty faster, half way between a laser and the really quick boys (RS600 is 920).

There've been plenty of better than a laser mid fleet boats, most of them are rare and obscure. Is RS going to break that the Americans Gave the RS100 Sailboat of the year (yachts and Dinghies), but at a glance it does look a tincy wincy bit like an MX Ray, which was a horrible shunt of a boat.