Do aluminum booms break ??

[dsgrntlxmply]

I was once hanging around a shop when they decided to go through their stack of old instruction/rental booms to see which ones had trouble, and to salvage any potentially useful parts from ones that were no longer fully usable.

All were aluminum, and apart from a couple that had been bent to kinks, all of the failures were corrosion breakage, or a combination of corrosion and sand resulting in irremediable seize-up.

That said, I own only aluminum booms, mostly because the lower cost is attractive while I am still trying to build basic skills. First season, I disassembled the boom, flushed it with fresh water, and set it out disassembled to dry after every weekend, then spray with McLube Sailkote. Second season I did this less frequently. This season, I'll disassemble and flush at the end of the season, given that some of my sailing now is mid-week.

The Chinook Pro-1 is easy to disassemble. The North Silver is not: the end plug design on the inner telescoping arms is unfriendly. I haven't had the older HPL apart in a while, and cannot recall whether it is easy.

[gobbdogg]

Carbon booms snapped- 2 Fiberspar, 1 Dynafiber..all at the harness lines...aluminum snapped- 2 Chinook... jumping hooked in... yeah, the alum is a bit heavier, and slightly flexier, however in small sizes- 5.8 and under it matters less. I can buy 3 aluminum for the price of 1 carbon...Also, carbon's achilles heel is point impact- like on rocks- think that often contributes to mast failure.. same for booms. Sandy launches it's not so much an issue, but in our local rocks I've definitely gotten all components banged around on the hard bits.