Lasers used to be all sorts of fancy colors. I once owned an orange one. My current one is blue. There were green ones and yellow ones too. I’ve seen at least one purple one.
Then the hotshots figured out that you were less likely to be spotted over early at the start line if your boat was a color that didn’t stand out from the crowd. So white became popular. After a while the manufacturer took the easy way out and stopped making colored boats altogether. For several years all new Lasers have been white.
Yeah, those Sunfish stripes are cool. I also once owned a teal Sunfish with a purple cockpit. That was fun.
My 1995 Laser actually came with very fancy graphics on the hull (a bit like those awful Olympic logos.) They were only stickers though and over time began to peel so I pulled them all off. There have been some other special edition Lasers with fancy patterns in the gelcoat.
One very practical advantage of white boats is that it is much easier to fix scratches with gelcoat. White is white. Perfectly matching faded blue or orange is harder.
my2fish: a blog about sunfish sailing 
Sure thing.
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Lasers used to be all sorts of fancy colors. I once owned an orange one. My current one is blue. There were green ones and yellow ones too. I’ve seen at least one purple one.
Then the hotshots figured out that you were less likely to be spotted over early at the start line if your boat was a color that didn’t stand out from the crowd. So white became popular. After a while the manufacturer took the easy way out and stopped making colored boats altogether. For several years all new Lasers have been white.
Sad really.
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Tillerman, that’s not too surprising. I know I often see Sunfish with similar colors as well, mostly older ones.
I don’t mind the boring white or light gray hull. A nice colored stripe or two is nice though.
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Yeah, those Sunfish stripes are cool. I also once owned a teal Sunfish with a purple cockpit. That was fun.
My 1995 Laser actually came with very fancy graphics on the hull (a bit like those awful Olympic logos.) They were only stickers though and over time began to peel so I pulled them all off. There have been some other special edition Lasers with fancy patterns in the gelcoat.
One very practical advantage of white boats is that it is much easier to fix scratches with gelcoat. White is white. Perfectly matching faded blue or orange is harder.
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Yeah I’ve seen pictures of special edition Sunfish with wild graphics.
My 2000 Sunfish has 2 fat maybe 10″ wide light green stripes. There was also 2 maybe 1″ blue stripes in the middle of each of the green stripes.
But the blue stripes were stickers and had peeled mostly off. I peeled them off the rest of the way.
So now I have two light green stripes with thin faded lines down the middle.
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