Apparently Uffa Fox (designer of the laser dinghy) didn't look around too much.

Many racing mono's have waterballast (Volvo ocean, Classe Mini (the open fleet), large cats and tri like Orange). Many competition landyachters put (bags of) sand in their **** during days with strong winds and competition glider planes use a significant amount of waterballast to improve both airspeed and distance covered before having to find another thermal to regain altitude for the next leg.

Of course keel boats need weight on the end of their "fin" to even be able to make forward progress and sailing ships or a past era (galjons and clippers) used massive rock or brick ballast placed inside the hull on the keelline to stablize the boat, they would capize otherwise. Actually these bricks would be transported in the otherwise empty ship to the colonies where part of it was unloaded and used to build the settler towns. This was possible as the return cargo of species and other goods would make up for the reduction in this ballast.

I guess the designers of all these championship craft are just misguided.




But they don't have that choice as the alternative is to cut down on the saildrive and that loses more performance. Therefor it is not only a matter of safety, it is a matter of performance where they are unwilling to solve the issue by powering down the rig (loose performance)

Wouter