When I bought the Piper, she was missing a few rather crucial bits and pieces. Obviously, she was missing a rudder, or rather, her rudder was so ruined that it was unusable. The first Really Big Project was to build a rudder, which is documented in some earlier posts. She had no sails. Well, now she has sails. They're not class-legal, but they were inexpensive and will push the boat along, for now. One of her upper rigging shrouds is "stranded" (that means that one of the wires is broken) and it must be replaced. However, the other really big bit that was lacking was a boom.
The Piper Association provides new Piper owners with copies of the original David Boyd drawings for the hull and rig. The foot length of the mainsail is on the sail plan drawing. It's supposed to be a minimum of 10' 6" and a maximum of 11' 6". The Ensign mainsail that I have to use for now has a foot of 10' 3". I figured that an 11' 6" boom was about right. Then I'd have a mainsail with a foot dimension right in the middle of what the designer specified. I used to have a small, wood double-ended boat from Chesapeake Light Craft; their "Skerry" design. I outfitted that boat with an aluminum mast, which was about 14 feet long. Well, I sold the skerry a couple of years ago and the fellow who bought it only wanted to row it, so I still had the mast. It was just an aluminum tube, but all the photographs I've seen of Pipers show them with loose-footed mainsails, so a straight tube should be just fine. The Piper has a particular style of grooved mast fitting, into which the gooseneck...the "pivot" between mast and boom, fits. I had picked up one of those fittings on ebay about a year ago, and that was the hard part. The big specialty rigging store online wanted hundred of dollars for that casting! I think I spent $15. The rest was cobbling together some bits and pieces I had lying around, and visiting my local steel supply for some 1-inch stainless steel square-tube, from which to make a toggle. After three long work sessions, well....Alpha has a boom!
I picked up the u-bolt, eye and boom block at Blue Pelican Marine consignment store for silly little amounts of money.... I think the block was $6. I happened to notice that they had a good supply of old, but perfectly functional winches. This is great, as the starboard winch on Alpha is quite ruined.
The mainsheet on the Piper seems to mostly be either 4:1 or 6:1 on the Scottish boats. 3 or 5 parts of those combinations leads to either a fixed point on the aft deck, just behind the tiller, or to a traveler system. The remaining line descends from the middle of the boom to either a jam-block on the center thwart, or a barney post. This is where the crew adjusts the main trim. That means there needs to be a sheeting point in the middle of the boom. I actually had a boom bail, and I also had a fitting that I could have riveted on, but instead, I opted to use some leftover wide polypropylene and 1-inch, blisteringly-strong double-thickness tubing to make a saddle. No holes in the boom!
The hardwood masthead from the skerry was cut down and sanded, and drilled for a 3/8th's inch stainless steel bolt which is the rotation axis for the gooseneck. I painted it green....this seems to be a teal green and yellow boat! Bits and bobs from the metal shop, plus some bolts and the gooseneck slide from ebay were all assembled.
Lo and Behold! Alpha has her boom!
