The Laser 5000 started life as a ‘concept’ boat, before developing into a successful performance dinghy out on the race course. It began with a small group of forward thinkers from the world of dinghy sailing, including Cliff Norbury and Derek Clark, who between them came up with a visionary design for a two person skiff. At that time, the word ‘skiff’ meant an antipodean import, so a UK designed and built boat bringing this new and exciting development into the sport was very much a radical departure. The ultimate goal of the group was to build a boat that would not only bring skiff sailing into the mainstream, but once established, would become an Olympic class.
Their design brief was passed onto Phil Morrison, who drew up lines for what would be a ‘big’ boat when compared to most other dinghies. At a full 5 metres in length, the powerful hull lines hinted at performance afloat and lots of it!! The new boat would be driven by a rig which by the standards of the day, was massive when the monster asymmetric spinnaker was flying, the total sail area would break the 50m² barrier.
Keeping all this power in balance would require both helm and crew to be trapezing from extendable racks. To handle all this sail and the compression loadings of twin trapezing, required the spars to be ‘beefed up’ bringing the dinghy mast section at the nearby Ian Proctor workshop into new territory.
By 1992 the prototype boat was under construction in Contender builder Ian Ridge’s workshop, as it took shape
Project Leader Derek Clark tried to keep speculation about the new boat to a minimum, but once it hit the water the WOW factor alone generated a huge amount of interest. At this point the people at Laser became involved with the project and agreed to take on construction and marketing of the boat, under the brand of Laser 5000.
Offering strict one design sailing on a boat that raised the bar above the established ‘high performance’ classes, the Laser 5000 was an immediate success. At a commercial level, the Laser 5000 was soon attracting high profile sponsorship, which in turn benefited from a widely televised European Circuit.
Unfortunately, the driving force which made the boat take such a huge step forward along the path of dinghy development was starting to work against it. Laser had done an excellent job in making the 5000 a ‘skiff for all’ but in order to keep to the one design philosophy, options for further development of the boat were not followed through. In addition, Laser had added to the original construction to make the boat ‘bullet proof’. This was great for the first generation of skiff sailors who were given a solid platform to learn the new techniques required for such a radical boat. The downside was that with a robust aluminium mast and strong hull, the overall weight increased to the point where the nickname ‘Five Tonner’ was not without some justification.
The Laser 5000 had been the ground breaking boat in the one design skiff genre, but now with an Olympic place finally up for grabs, the competition showed that weight was going to be the deciding factor. Topper recognised this fact and used carbon fibre in the construction of the ‘Boss’, but it was Julian Bethwaite who best exploited the weight savings with his 49er. The 49er would go on to win the Trials for the new Olympic ‘performance boat’ and in doing so would consign the Laser 5000 to the history books.
The boats themselves however live on courtesy of their solid construction. They may no longer be ‘cutting edge’, but the Laser 5000 is still one of sailing’s greats