Is More Comfort Worth It? You Judge

[At the Class Meeting at Nationals, Latane Montague undertook to see what could be learned about raising the boom by doing it, here's Latane's description of the results. There are lots of photos at the bottom of the page. --webmaster]

For step #1, we had Jim Miller shorten a class legal 2003 mainsail by 3 inches, cutting that much off the top and fairing in the roach. This cost $110 and resulted in a sail that looked fine, it was very hard to tell by looking that anything had been done to the sail. The re-cut sail appeared to set just fine with no adverse affects apparent with respect to shape. He also added a clew grommet to facilitate additional boom height experiments at heights greater than 3 inches above the current level. I was not able to get the sail back for the Leukemia Cup, but it was eventually mailed to me and we took it sailing on Sept. 25.

Steve & Laura Kistler, and Ian & Nancy joined us for the test sail and Laura and Patty took the pictures. Onshore we unfastened the boom gooseneck and reattached it with a hose clamp. We also added a reference band of black tape with the top edge four inches above the top edge of the blue band which marks the current lower limit of the main luff. We then hoisted the main in the parking lot to an initial setting of four inches above the current standard position. Aesthetically, in the parking lot the change in the look of the boat was very noticeable. Four inches did not look "bad," but the change in look was dramatic enough that no one in the group had any interest in testing the boom at a height greater than 4 inches above the current height.

In all but one of the pictures of #727 that are posted on the Hampton Website, the boom is four inches above the current height, to fully shorten the sail 4 inches we reefed the sail at the clew with the grommet that Jim added. In a couple of shore side pictures, Steve is holding the whisker pole to indicate where of the bottom edge of the boom would be under the current rules.

In the water, the increased clearance made a very dramatic positive difference in the head room and visibility. Sailing the boat was much, much easier, you had the feeling that you barely had to duck to complete a tack and the maneuver could be done much more quickly. The increased visibility was amazing and was probably the most dramatic part of the improvement. In the pictures, the boom is still lower than the skipper's head, but the amount of ducking you have to do to see to leeward is dramatically different. Check out the side-by-side pics of 727 and 706 with this in mind, 706 has her boom on the standard position. The distance you can see to leeward without ducking is increased many fold, and the experience of sailing the boat is dramatically improved due to the increased visibility and headroom.

All of these perceptions were confirmed when we swapped boats and sailed 706 with the normal set up.  Steve and I laughed out loud at how much more difficult the boat was to sail and how much less we could see in the boat with the standard boom height. The relief from a higher boom would probably be even more appreciated in a fiberglass boat with its higher cockpit floor.

In the water, we also found that the visual/aesthetic difference between the standard boom, and the raised boom was more subtle, and harder to perceive than when observed in the parking lot with the boat on the trailer.

When we got back in 727, we then tried the boom at 3 inches to see whether you could retain most of the benefits of 4 inches while keeping the boat looking more the same. In short, 3 was also good, but not quite as good at the 4 inch position for comfort and visibility. The question comes down to aesthetics, and at the end of the day I think that 4 inches looks fine, but I look forward to seeing what others think after checking out the pictures. Three inches higher was a noticeable improvement and aesthetically the boat looks nearly indistinguishable from the standard position on the water. Having spent good bit of time fiddling with the boom, my sense is that any change less than 3 inches would not be worth the hassle of a rule change.

Picture # 476 shows the boom on 727 at 3 inches above normal. My final sense is that 4 inches would be the right number so long as we insure that the boat does not loose any sail area to get that. I would be in favor of a change that makes some effort to replace lost sail area. --Latane

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