BOOM!

How to repair a boom without any experience.

Step one: Remove boom from boat.

Step Two: Analyze boom and grimace as you realize it is bent in not one, but two directions!

Step Three: Remove all of the hardware from boom including all of the parts that have rusted into place. Might we recommend power tools?

Step Four: Prep your sleeving materials. In this case we are getting ready to cut down and cut the sail track out of a broken mast from a Catalina Capri. Major thanks to Tradewinds Sailing who donated this to the project and to the class of students that kept their cool and hauled all of the pieces of this broken mast back to shore after it broke under sail! Eek!

Step Five: Don your safety gear like a rockstar.

Step Six: Thank Tradewinds again for being the best sailing school around and for helping us in a million ways!!!

Step Seven: Bring out the pouty face because you are hungry and your husband is not responding quickly enough.

Step Eight: Take a grinder and cut the track out of the mast.

Step Nine: WIN!

 

Step Ten: Seek assistant with that last screw you can't get out! Thanks Steve!

Step Eleven: Call on your friends to help you try and re-bend your boom. When that doesn't work, just have a seat and enjoy the sunshine!

 

Step Twelve: While friends are sitting on the boom to keep it straight, shove the mast inside. 

Step Thirteen: Rivet the two layers of metal together! 

Step Fourteen: Re-drill all holes for the hardware you removed back in Step Three. It has to go thru both layers of metal now!

Step Fifteen: If your boom is old and sketchy looking like ours, now is the time to prep it for a new layer of paint. Basically that just requires sanding...

...and sanding...

...and sanding! No pictures, but next we painted it!

Step Sixteen: Have your friend Tom enjoy a cold beer while you drill weep holes into the boom. This gives water a place to go if it gets inside the boom.

Step Seventeen: Now it's time to put all of the hardware back on and re-run the outhaul line. If your arm is small enough this is a pretty simple task!

Step Eighteen: Put boom back on boat! Way to go!!

BOOM!