Monday, January 30, 2006

Laser Rigging: Vang

Now that I am once again in possession of the Laser I used to sail in high school (134628) I am looking at purchasing the updated rigging. There appear to be a few options and so I'd like some feedback from readers on the pros and cons of the different set-ups. First up are the choices for the vang.

There's Harken's version:
And Holt Allen's version:

4 comments:

Tillerman said...

Aaah. Shevy Gunter where are you now?

You may remember that Shevy used to maintain a website drlaser.com which was the most amazing repository of Laser information. When the new rigging was first introduced, Shevy posted scores of articles to this site detailing every engineering detail of the various systems and even got involved in some acrimonious correspondence with some of the manufacturers on certain issues that got him riled up. I'm sure he had at least one extremely long article comparing every aspect of the Holt and Harken Laser vangs.

Sadly Shevy moved away and gave up maintaining the site and it is now defunct. But you can find various emails on the topic if you search the Laser email archives at http://archives.laserforum.org/

You can of course design your own vang as long as you follow class rules which include a restriction that you use one of the two builder supplied vang cleat fittings.

Some dealers such as Colie and Rooster offer their own improved versions of the new rigging. Though these thend to focus on better mousetraps for the cunningham and outhaul rather than the vangs.

As far as I know there isn't a strong preference in the Laser community for one vang or the other.

Good luck.

Litoralis said...

Tillerman, which one do you use?

Tillerman said...

I think it's your second picture, the Holt I guess. Both lines are working in the same plane as opposed to the Harken where the primary and secondary are at 90 degrees to each other if you see what I mean.

But I've never used the other one so I've no idea whether therer's any real difference in performance

Anonymous said...

As someone who has used both, the harken is much better in my view.

The fact that the holt operates in "the same plane" actually means you cannot thread the lines without them crossing over one another at some point and creating friction.

The Harken removes any rope cross-over and prevents this friction.

In fact, I have seen a new (possibly proto?) holt vang that has the same block lay-out as the harken to try and address this problem.