CVRDA

I dont know anything about these clinker built oldies, but I remember renting a clinker built old fashioned dinghy ...on the Serpentine in Hyde park , London , back in the 70's...with gaudily coloured dacron sails ... Does anybody remember those Serpentine rental boats and know what they were ...? A...

I think most really sucessful boats (over 40 000) grew some way outside the sailing establishment and generally against some similar boat endorsed By ISAF, IYRU , FFV , . The Cadet was backed by the RYA and Prince Philip and started earlier than the Mirror , yet it dindn't reach by far the same prod...

I didnt mean harm about the Mirror, in fact i have the same kind of fondness for the Vaurien,which was the french equivalent of the Mirror and i deeply regret that dinghy sailing seems to loose the kind of big following it enjoyed in the 60,s and 70,s. Only , in the late sixties many things in Engla...

It is incredible that the Mirror (basically a DIY Popuboat that haunted the lower middle / Working class second hand Austin minis roof racks on their way to the holiday sites in the Late 60's when i crossed the channel to improve my english) is now built to standards best suited for the 505, with a ...

The big ERMAT block is indeed a ratchet block, of the semi automatic kind that goes ratcheting under tension....except that this (and an earlier model with ali flanges stainless steel cage and bronze ratchet, a electrolytic nightmare) never ever worked properly ...so it is better described as a non ...

I think , as with all firsts , the is some national pride involved and also experimenters work in their respective country in some kind of obscurity, secrecy or whatever before their work catches the limelight. In the Voiles et voiliers Interviews L Lanaverre and Maury admit they had quite a long ex...

I think , as with all firsts , the is some national pride involved and also experimenters work in their respective country in some kind of obscurity, secrecy or whatever before their work catches the limelight. In the Voiles et voiliers Interviews L Lanaverre and Maury admit they had quite a long ex...

As for the french producing round bilge GRP dinghies..as soon as the 420 was started , a host of imitators tried to launch their own classes, someime successfully (470, 445, Zef) Sometimes with confidential output: even Matra , the specialist Car maker ( remember Yury Gagarin's blue sports car , the...

There was a try to convert the Vaurien to Fibreglass (with some sort of primitive brown polyurethane foam between two layers of GRP) ...it was an utter failure and it delaminated. Maybe it would have vworked with some kind of boston Whaler 13 process (sarcophagus mold and injected white "clark&...

There was a try to convert the Vaurien to Fibreglass (with some sort of primitive brown polyurethane foam between two layers of GRP) ...it was an utter failure and it delaminated. Maybe it would have vworked with some kind of boston Whaler 13 process (sarcophagus mold and injected white "clark&...

There was a try to convert the Vaurien to Fibreglass (with some sort of primitive brown polyurethane foam between two layers of GRP) ...it was an utter failure and it delaminated. Maybe it would have vworked with some kind of boston Whaler 13 process (sarcophagus mold and injected white "clark&...

I've sent a sample , the older articles are on the french laser website and as i didn't make safeguard copies they have to be retrieved n line.

Hope yo 'll make something of it, feel free to ask about the gallicism, slang , puns and double entendres that are interspersed.

I did a series of articles for the french Laser Newsletter, One series was a tongue in cheek mock archeological thing about telling that pumping rocking and so on had been ther since sailing starterd some 2000years BC... It involved (among others) pieces like a "don't rock a fragile boat" ...

The brands that you quote (TC Win and the like) speak first part of the 80's to me , I saw them in magazines but started racing Division 2 in earnest in 84 , in the 2nd part of the 80's and i used later "marvels" that had been optimized for light flat water and had a very round , instable ...

Some lasers had the bad glue disease (end of the irish production in Waerford and PS going into recievership at the end of the 80's) and the epoxy glue tended to disintegrate but even like this taking the deck out was very difficult : the mast chimney molded with the deck is is glued in the mast sup...