What Fibreglass Won't Tell You...

[Jasper & Karen]

...is that vital parts of your equipment are in seriously bad shape. Removing our main boom to the shop for the winter, we planned to refinish it and repair a small tear in the glass. My first clue that all was not well should have been the globbed-on Sikkaflex applied by a former owner in the general vicinity of all of the fittings at the boom end. But in fact, the first clue was the screw in the sail track that I drew straight out with my fingertips.

To make a sorry story short:

Less than 1/3 of the diameter of the boom where the bales (per Clyde: the bails or horses) were mounted still resembled wood. The rest was so rotten we removed it by handfuls. For 2- 2 1/2 feet at the end of the boom, there was more rot than actual wood. The next few feet were extremely wet, albeit solid, and that's where I stopped removing glass and Jasper and I had a serious chat about scarfs vs. new construction.

That tear in the glass had probably been there since we bought the boat in 2006, and no doubt we should have gotten to it sooner. It didn't look all that bad, though; and the boom seemed sound enough. (And there were one or two other little things to get to.) The bales certainly took some load from time to time and oddly, although they were glassed in, too, the glass covering them wasn't damaged at all. Given that the bolts holding them were lodged mainly in powder, you'd expect to see some cracking. As it stands, I count us lucky that we found the problem before one of us ended up wearing one of the bales!

Clyde asked if we'd done a tap-test to see if it sounded hollow--if you have a glassed boom, I'd recommend you try it. I didn't bother; it seemed redundant when screws had no purchase and the box knife I inserted into the tear in the glass disclosed the powdery condition of the boom!

My diagnosis of the problem: poorly seated fittings allowed enough water to enter to cause the wood to swell, eventually splitting the fibreglass cover, which of course allowed more water to enter, exacerbating the problem. The correct fix for this condition is apparently not to squeeze some Sikkaflex around the fittings.

Our little chat about scarfs vs. building new led us to the latter solution. Although there's still a goodly length of solid spruce which we could dry out, the scarf would have to be about 4' long, making the new section we require far too large for our lathe. Then there's the aesthetic question: our new mizzen boom isn't round. If we build a new laminated box-style boom we can match the look of the masts and mizzen boom (staysail boom is on the blocks awaiting assessment!).

We will NOT be glassing the new boom! We will post pics as we get to the work.