Boom Boom

Another evening spent at Jacksons but this time Dave and I were installing our new, in-boom outhaul system. The purpose of this was two-fold. The existing outhaul was not working correctly and got stuck everytime it was pulled on and the existing system looked messy with a 4:1 pulley system at the base of the mast.
By installing the outhaul and new Harken fiddle blocks into the boom, they will be protected and out of the way. The installation involved drilling a hole into the boom at the guestimated correct location… please take note that unless you are exceptionally skilled like Dave, you should probably look where you are drilling. Next challenge was to rig the blocks correctly and push a plated D-ring with a bolt into the boom using a long socket extention and attempt to get the bolt into the new hole. This actually only took a couple of minutes and meant the end of the hard work. This was bolted into position and sealed up with some heatshrink. Next we had to pull the new outhaul through the length of the boom using the old one which also went to plan without any problem at all. With everything going so well, I was starting to get a bit paranoid! We put the boom back together and gave it a proper test. Again… everything seemed fine.

Having cleared up and tied the boom onto the van we headed to the boat to put it back on for the race on the following day. 15 minutes later and the boom was back in place with only some rope to cut when we have the mainsail rigged up. With everything going so well up to now, I can only hope it doesnt fall to bits or something!