Out With The Old...

... in with the new. As much as I like the green theme, slowly I will phase out what I can. This time it's the boom.

Panda hooked me up with a John Mast aluminum boom from Denmark. All the wood purist and booing and hissing, but it's the future of the fleet. Half the boats I saw in Sweden and Denmark had them, they were totally accepted and... they are less maintenance. At this point in my life I don't have the time to strip the green paint off, see what is exactly under that paint because as we all know, until it's scrapped off a whole lot a problems can turn a seemingly simple project into an adventure in wood working.
The green boom had evidence of problems, a crack here...
A crack there...
Another crack here... and it was too thick. Extra wood was added to the sides, but that makes it illegal, right?
I'm not sure it's supposed to be open at the end, but does have the outhaul/5-1 purchase inside. Problematic if it jams... there's no way to fix it on the fly, but Panda assures me that he has worked this bug out.

I'm not too fond of the color chosen for the outhaul line... kinda clashes with the color scheme. I'll deal with that later.
The green boom was almost straight.
This one is definitely straight.
Pretty slick how the shiv is inside the boom and the outhaul line descends almost straight down, through one block and trails aft. Really cleans things up compared to how it was before. First test of the new boom will be the first race of the 2008 Wednesday Evening Series.
This is next on my list of things I shouldn't really wait for to break like every other one I've ever had. I do like being able to set the jib halyard to a number on the side of the box, but control lines can be marked in other ways too. Oh, by the way, if anyone needs a spare boom because their's broke you can use my green one until you get your new one.