Boom brake
- Thread starter NiceBeny
- Start date
Type boom brake into the search engine here... and then try the word preventor... there was a couple of threads that has recently passed thru about this very subject...
Had a Gybe Easy on my last boat. Works well as long as the line is relatively new and flexible. It uses a special, proprietary rope that slides at a controlled rate across the metal fitting. After a few months in the weather, the line becomes stiff and requires replacement. It's hard to find a supplier for just the rope, and it's pretty expensive if you can find it.
There are at least two ways to rig the Gybe Easy boom brake. Placing the friction device on a control line back to the cockpit allows you to activate/deactivate the brake AND set up the Gyb'Ease line with quick disconnect shackles to opposite sides of the boat. This makes it easy to remove the friction line and stow it.
The other deploy method requires more blocks and clutches and Wichard shows the lazy winch being used to work the device. This seems unnecessarily complicated. Wichard doesn't do a good job of instructing use of the system. But is bone simple, so maybe they think it is intuitive.
The other deploy method requires more blocks and clutches and Wichard shows the lazy winch being used to work the device. This seems unnecessarily complicated. Wichard doesn't do a good job of instructing use of the system. But is bone simple, so maybe they think it is intuitive.
Thanks Jackdaw, I learned a lot on that video. A climbers figure eight will work fine for me. Chief
Well, at least you get a sense how things work. But that is total half-baked jury rigging. These devices potentially manage huge shock loads. I wouldn't put a turning block in line for a crash gybe shock load and nobody should be tying them off to their chainplates. You can rig a gyb'easy to work without any tending which makes them work well for single handers.
Yea maybe... but Pip Hare has more ocean miles than all of us on this board combined, most in short handed racing boats. I'll take it on faith that if she needed to set that boat up for real offshore work and not a video, she would have done it right.
PS - properly secured and attached, the chain-plates are easily the strongest and safest place to attach anything to the boat. In particular on fractional boats. IIRC Wichard recommends them for the install.
We have a Dutchman Boom Brake tied off to the chainplates on our First 36.7. The boom is end-sheeted, and to mitigate mid-boom shock-load, we reinforced the boom bail-attachment with through-bolted straight chain-plates. Don't really know if that was necessary, but we didn't want to find out that it was.
The chainplates are not designed to be shock-loaded at near 90deg. to their design load. If nothing else you risk opening up the thru-deck seal. Wichard does show an installation connecting to the chain plates, and they also show them routing through turning blocks. Forces that can bend or break a boom can torque a side-loaded chainplate loose, or sling a broken block at the cockpit. There are better and safer installs.
Its more like 45 degrees.
And the chainplates/rig base is held in huge vertical tension by the rig loading, and horizontally by the deck. It is easily the most over-engineered part of your boat, and the strongest part of any system you might attach to it, and I promise a boom brake system will fail in at least 4 other places before your chain-plates come up to anywhere anything near worrisome levels.
Like Tejas says, your boom will fail or sail shreds or line will break way before anything happens to your chainplates.
Same, same. I have the Wichard Gybe Easy too. It is very simple, but I'm sure some of the other suggestions above are even simpler, and definitely cheaper.