Has anyone rigged a preventer for their main sail?
I am doing a bit of single handing coming up and my experience is that I am great with following winds at the helm, but notice that when others at the helm it isn’t too uncommon that they cause an unintentional jibe. Since I will leave the helm underway now and again, often in fluky Florida/Bahamas winds, thinking rigging a preventer may help to make sure that the Boom doesnt live up to its name.
This happen when going into Port Everglades or Government Cut as the giant condos create a swirling wind pattern at times.
If so, please say what kind of hardware did you use? Where and how did you attach and rig it, etc. Pictures are a bonus. I saw “boom brakes” on line but the reviews seem a bit dodgy.
I almost always sail singlehanded. I use my gunmout pole as a preventer. Set it up 90 degrees to the boat and used the spinnaker sheets to prevent both the camberspar one side and the main the other. All controllable from the cockpit and reusing rigging you already have if you have the spinnaker set/gunmount option. Easy to release too because sheets are in the cockpit.
Of course this also prevents the use of the spinnaker. But getting the sails into a solid downwind configuration wing on wing is magic when it comes to boat speed and less stressful than flying the kite IMO. I watch it closely though, not sure I would want an inexperienced sailor using this technique and not sure I would use any preventer at all with an inexperienced helmsman. I would worry them rounding down in a panic and that could be a pretty wild ride unless they knew exactly what they were doing, which, by definition, they don’t. I wouldn’t do this on my AP either unless things were pretty light and not much of a seaway. A boom brake might solve this kind of an issue but someone with experience with the boom brakes would need to comment on that
Good points Mike! I don’t have a gun mount to attempt to work that downwind magic. I plan on next rigging a boom brake - has anyone tried this? My preference is to use the Winchard boom brake - two blocks attached to the toe rail adjacent the mast, with jibe control lines running to blocks in the cockpit. The boom brake doesn’t prevent a jibe, but certainly does control the nasty boom swing across….any thoughts……
Also - the boom brake would be awesome for purposefully jibbing, under control - coming back into sf bay from outside, going near city front and jibbing more north, eg., - take the danger out of jibbing with these huge mains! Let you know, doing this in September ….
Take some dyneema with brummel spliced loops on both ends. It should be about same length of boom. One end is looped over the boom bail. The other end is attached to a line with a snap shackle. The line runs from a clutch in the cockpit, through a turning block attached to a bow cleat with a soft shackle, then it attaches the boom dyneema loop. During a jibe it is disconnected before and reconnected on the new jibe.
The simpler “quick” rig is an old mainsheet. It is attached to the mid boom sheet bail and taken down to the midship cleat. This clever idea was taken from Steve Lee on Salacia.
As promised I experimented in September with the Boom brake - I acquired an EasyGyb boom brake with gybe flex included line. The line was 52’ and too short for GoodWay- I needed something like 72’. I rigged the easy gybe aft of my preventer and ran a thinner line through the p/s blocks adjacent the gooseneck in the toe rail, with line trailing back to cockpit winches. In 20k tws, even with the tension put to high with the three easy gybe setting engaged and the winches tight, the boom swung by rather too forcefully still - but way less for forcibly than with nothing!. I think I need to try this with thicker line - so let you know how that goes. See the very bad video below for boom brake single handed operations! If set up correctly, this system could work and would be simple to keep more or less permanently set up…. On the third setting, the boom came across and snagged my open main hatch- causing me to gybe back again, and go below to close the hatch and then gybe again…. Poor video!
I set up this as an experiment - so if you want an easy gybe boom brake with 52’ original gybe flex line, let me know and it’s yours for $230 plus shipping ( or meet me in Emeryville for pick up!).