ILCA/PSA Dispute: Will Significant Measurement Differences Between Boats be Tolerated?

 With legal action having been started in the ILCA/PSA dispute, a central issue will be the tolerance of significant differences in measurements between hulls.

The dispute between Performance Sailcraft and the International Laser Class Association pertains to a variety of the boat measurements, including the length, the beam and the daggerboard width.


The IlCA (ex-Laser) is supposed to be an “off the shelf, equal performance, one-design sailboat” — a term created by the International Laser Class Association, that draws from a term used by Takao Atani in the 1970s, that the Laser should be an “affordable, off the shelf, equal performance, one-design sailboat,”

 Note that the word affordable has interestingly been dropped. A Laser, at the beginning, did cost US$1000; today it’s about US$10,000.

 The official measurements of the Laser were, from the very beginning, 423 cm of length and 137 cm of beam, according to Kirby’s drawings.

These remain the official measurements of the boat, which is an Olympic Class, as stipulated by World Sailing.


But, according to Performance Sailcraft Australia, boats built by other builders, since around 2020, using moulds provided by the class, have different measurements.

This is a central element of the legal proceedings that are going to start imminently in Texas — where the International Laser Class Association has its offices. 


There is also a legal action in Australia, while mediation efforts under the auspices of the Sports Dispute Resolution Service have gone nowhere, because of a lack of participation by one of the two parties.


This dispute is highly important, as some 8,000 boats, worth approximately 80 million US$, may have been built, over the past 5 years, at non-compliant measurements.

As the ILCA is Olympic equipment, for single-handed male and female racing. the dispute is also of high interest to the sport of sailing’s governing body — World Sailing — and to the International Olympic Committee.

Check our previous coverage: “ILCA / PSA Dispute: an Immediate Implication”.

Let’s analyze what is at stake.

https://dinghysailing.substack.com/p/ilca-psa-dispute-will-significant-measurement-differences-be-tolerated

 



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