Boom teardown to get at the outhaul – ideas?

[Van]

We’ve mothballed Rainshadow for the winter, and now we are starting on the numerous projects that you think of during the sailing season. It’s a long list…. good job I got laid off a few years ago! 🙂

One of those is something that Trevor first raised in his Bent Boom thread – the outhaul (at least on Ronar M and Rainshadow) is “poxy”. It only has a 3 to 1 purchase, and seems quite wimpy. During our summer sailing, when needing to flatten the main, I always felt like there had to be a better way. I’d struggle, and have to get Marilyn to flog the main, and even then it would be hard to pull it in tight.

So, I took down the boom and tore it apart. You can see what I found on our blog. It’s a pretty simple block and tackle system.

Now, the question is what is the easiest way to improve things – most notably give me a lot more purchase. I’m thinking that it would be simplest to add another block that would effectively double the purchase to 6 to 1. That would mean of course that there is twice as much line to handle for a given movement of the outhaul slider, but that does not seem like such an issue.

If anyone has made changes like this, or perhaps put a small winch on the boom, I’d be interested to hear more. Of course, if you think 3:1 is good enough, then let me know I need to work on my biceps!

By the way, I’m also rethinking the reefing lines and the two may be related. Because the bozos at North Sails did such a poor job of fitting our main, the reefing grommets in the main were moved aft far enough that the reefing blocks on the boom had to be moved aft as well. So that got me thinking about reefing best practices. More on that later, but an outhaul with a 6:1 purchase might be helpful if it could double duty as a reefed clew outhaul.

Cheers,

Van

[Ronar M]

Hi Van

Thanks for that. Very interesting. I have done nothing about my boom yet but am thinking of fitting some sort of external tackle for the outhaul to save all the grinding and drilling to get the boom apart. Your account has probably stiffened my resolve to do that. I don’t like things hidden away inside the boom. Will let you know how I get on. Trevor

[Jeff]

Many thanks to Van for taking the trouble of showing us the inside of the boom photo’s.!
My boom has a short length of what looks like something not much better than string hanging out of the side of the boom, but I could’nt get inside it to investigate & replace the cordage last year & didn’t have time to go any further with it, so I’m following this topic with much interest.
Jeff
‘Sea Eagle’

[Van]

Finally finished the new outhaul – I did add another block to give a compound 6 to 1 purchase. It seems to work well, but I have not tried it yet with a sail. And I replaced the “string” with a Dyneema line that has a 1200 pound strength 🙂

I’m also going to take a lot of care in screwing the boom back together. I think I’m going to lather the end fittings with lanocote before I stick them back in the boom, and goop up all the stainless fasteners with TefGel. I hope that means it will always be easy to get the boom apart. We’ll see!

Van

[Author]

Posts