The Laser 2, or Laser II, is a sailboat that was designed by New Zealander Frank Bethwaite and Canadian Ian Bruce as a one-design racer and first built in 1978.
Production
The design was built by Bruce's company, Performance Sailcraft, in Canada and also by Vanguard Sailboats in the United States. Production began in 1978 with approximately 8,200 boats completed, but it is now out of production. In 2007 Performance Sailcraft and Vanguard were merged to form LaserPerformance.
Design
thumb|left|A Laser 2 flying its [[spinnaker, with the crew on the trapeze]]
The Laser 2 is a sailing dinghy, built predominantly of fibreglass. It has a fractional sloop rig, a raked stem, a plumb transom, a transom-hung rudder controlled by a tiller with an extension and a retractable daggerboard. It displaces . The crew can make use of a single trapeze.
In a February 1980 review John Turnbull in Canadian Yachting wrote of the Laser 2, "Frank Bethwaite, the unclaimed maestro of high-powered dinghy design, and Ian Bruce, the designer / promoter of Performance Sailcraft, may have come up with the only boat that could live up to the expectations created by the Laser. It doesn't bring anything startlingly new to sailboat design except perhaps the idea that a mass-market boat should be fast and challenging."
Events
See also
- List of sailing boat types
Related development
- Laser (dinghy)