Hey all, just wanted to share some lessons from a recent boom extravaganza. 

Long story short we found some damage to our boom (bent from an uncontrolled jibe most likely). It seems the mid-boom sheeting on our boats makes this kind of damage likely so we're rigging an endboom preventor. Furthermore, the bails for our mainsheet were installed by simply drilling a hole and tossing a threaded bolt through the holes. I'm not sure if this was original, or if someone redid the mainsheet and did so poorly. 

What ended up happening was that the threaded bolts slowly ground out the holes and all 4 holes are now 2 inch gashes. Speaking to multiple riggers and machinists, what is needed is an isolator like nylon washers and lanocote or tefgel (obviously) as well as compression tubes and bolts that only have threads outside of the boom. I highly recommend you check how your mainsheet is setup and make sure there's no corrosion and that the bolts aren't sawing your boom in half. 

So we started looking for a new boom. Catalina direct wasn't super helpful as they had an old stock of extrusions that were quickly bought up (which is why you should all check yours! This may be a recurring issue? I'd love to hear how everyone else's mainsheet is doing). However, Warren at Catalina Yachts in Florida quickly found us a new boom hidden away at a dealer in Seattle and we're figuring out now if it will work for us. If anyone else has replaced their boom I'd love to hear your experience. We expect to keep all hardware and simply replace the extrusion itself. 

Hopefully this anecdote helps someone. Otherwise, I'd love to hear other's boom replacement stories. 

Fair winds! 
JP
R/V Lokahi