Originally Posted by Timbo
I'll bet it's more about the price and the learning curve to get foiling that is keeping kids on SUP's and Lasers.


Yep, and of course practicality and the fact that most people just don't care less about pure ultimate speed. If we did, none of us would be sailing cats - we'd all be on kiteboards and kitefoilers.

A Laser is also just a great boat to sail in a lot of ways. Instead of standing on a hull several feet above water and with your head about 14 feet from where the hull is slicing through, you're often inside a stream of spray and when you're hiking flat your head is about two feet above the water. In strong winds, they are an incredibly intense boat to sail well; you're bouncing the whole boat through the waves upwind while heading up and down over each bit of chop, and downwind you're using heel to steer the boat down the waves, carving turns of 30 degrees or more as you go from just above square to well by the lee, right on the knife edge of rolling in with a thud. And when you get in, the boat is unrigged in 10 minutes.

The big cats are also great fun, which is why I also sail them, but it's very different; more like riding a runaway rocket through the air than riding a bucking bronco which is what a Laser is like. And it all feeds back into the reason why mono racers did not turn onto cats when they saw them in the AC. It's not that they are anti-cat or old-fashioned, they just like different things just like some people like fine scotch and some like fine wine.