Look Ma, No Boom! - Jeff Arle and Kris Carlson

There we were again, attempting a close-hauled line into the washboard of 4-foot seas and 15-knot wind that Buzzard’s Bay can throw at you when you defy the sailing gods and motor against Cape Cod Canal’s 5-knot current. We had taken on a multi-day, several-hundred-mile sojourn with our almost-cliché of a sloop, a MacGregor 26M called SeaNapse. As many readers know, it’s a hybrid, trailerable boat that sold over 40,000 in its 27 year production run with retractable centerboard, rudders, a 60 hp outboard that powers the boat 15 knots up on plane after dumping 1200 pounds of water ballast. These innovative and unusual features solve many problems, but nonetheless, the MacGregor raises the specter of criticism from motor cruisers that the boat neither motor nor sails well. And this was one of those moments – anyone who has experience with sloops under 30’ LOA knows the feeling of a weather-helm, raising or lowering a mainsail which rarely was possible in the cockpit, or reefing a mainsail, and the head-smacking risks of sudden jibes as the weather picks up. The MacGregor has those problems in spades, all stemming from a traditional mainsail system. We fell off the wind, gutted our tack and spent another 20 minutes wrestling with the rigging, pulling in the main, reducing the furling jenny to small storm jib size. We finally packed that in, too, and just motored.

But at some point, struggling at the helm like wringing out a beach towel, a new and wonderful experiment hit me like a blast of spray over the foredeck — a seductive vision that solved these intrusions into what should be a great day of sailing. This article recites that experiment into the great exploration of sailing lore.

Kris and I have sailed together for over a decade now, but I wouldn’t say we’re ready to sign on with Davy Jones.

Based in Boston Harbor, we had taken the SeaNapse around Cape Cod, passing sharks and Ocean Sunfish lazily surface-feeding, out to Cuttyhunk, Block Island and Newport, through Woods Hole to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and through the outer riptides of Provincetown. Has any sailboat ever made the 80-mile trip from Westport, RI, to Boston Harbor, against the current in the Cape Cod Canal, or the 100-mile trip from Newburyport, MA , up to Monhegan Island in a single day, both of which the SeaNapse achieved, attesting to Roger MacGregor’s innovations? We had also managed to set it on fire, drift into a bell mark and damage the hull, navigate imprudently through dense fog, get towed into Scituate Harbor after engine failure, nearly be overturned by a whale and followed by dolphins, barely avoid dismasting after a spreader broke (we then replaced the aluminum with steel), and run aground on a shipwreck and the Nantucket jetty.

Through all these adventures the painful weak point of the MacGregor was the mainsail. What occurred to me was this: Our headsail was so reliable — infinitely adjustable sail area on the CDI roller-furler without raising or lowering via halyard. Why can’t the main be like that? Why couldn’t we get rid of the mainsail attached to the mast and attach another roller furler, but also get rid of the damned boom? Bring the control lines aft, and manage both sails in this same way? The idea seemed ridiculously heretical, but the more I considered it, the more it made sense. I read the history of the boom and if there were previous attempts at this blasphemy, or a clear reason why this shouldn’t or couldn’t be done. I could find neither. The boom holds the main’s shape in light wind, prevents leakage underneath the foot, and allows more sail area at the leech, though then requiring battens. A furler presents the problem of leakage and turbulence at the mast-furler gap. The MacGregor mast rotates, minimize that I hoped.

MacGregor 26M at the dock with the CDI jib furler at the headstay as well as a new CDI jib furler along the mast. But look Ma, no boom!

Forward view of the boomless furling main and jenny in 5-8 knot winds, boat speed 3–4 knots. Legacy mainsheet block and tackle, which keeps the sail at the best height, are attached at the new clew, as are new port-and-starboard control lines that run to blocks at the stanchions next to the helm, used to angle and shape the sail.

Kris was open to the idea. I was ready to throw caution to the wind (so to speak) and plow headlong into implementation He reached out to riggers of some repute to do the modifications. One Marblehead yard was unable to suppress their laughter and then failed to return calls or emails. I decided to order the kit and install it ourselves. Through CDI we found Ralph DiMattia in Quincy, an experienced sailmaker, rigger, and racer. Ralph found the idea highly questionable but also interesting and agreed to swage the furler stay, cut our main to achieve a concave leech and a shorter, higher foot to reduce weather helm, get the sail out of our way, improve visibility, eliminate its battens, and guide us to a possible solution. We had struggled with lazy jacks, battcars, stuck halyards, springy ‘boomkickers’, and hitting our heads on the spar coming out of the companionway. Many days we didn’t bother to raise the main, not wanting to wrestle the weather helm or ruefully see a horribly-shaped, reefed sail. Balancing the main and headsail was impossible. What if we could infinitely balance the main and jib area with the furlers? We both thought there was nowhere to go but up.

So, in ‘irons’ work-wise due to the pandemic, we had nothing better to do than try it. Off came the boom. We wrapped aluminum straps around the mast near the head and above the gooseneck. We shackled a CDI jib roller furler to the straps via the new stay, tightened its turnbuckle, bent the re-cut main onto the foil luff, stepped the mast with our brake winch and hoist the main. Would it work with rigging? Ahh – there’s the rub. We dummied up some configurations, but it was hard to know how it would work on the water. Our proposal was to attach the same mainsheet block, tackle, and traveler that had been attached mid-boom to the new clew, allowing us to pull the foot down if needed, and attaching additional running lines, port and starboard. Thus, 3 lines were attached to the clew, allowing a very wide variety of sail shapes and tension over variable canvas exposure.

The new sheets were above the heads of those sitting in the cockpit and visibility was improved with the higher foot, no boom, and a curled foot under sail – a huge plus. After a day in moderately heavy, 10-15 knot wind, we found we could nearly eliminate the weather helm. Balancing sail area between main and headsail was greatly enhanced using the two furlers, and eliminating raising, lowering, and reefing the main, and the boom, simplified everything.

Boomless furling main without headsail in 15 knot winds, boat speed 5–6 knots.

Jib furler attached to mast at gooseneck, the legacy main sheet block and tacke now attached to the clew, and 2 new control lines running into the cockpit.

An added block with fiddle, becket, and cleat for the aft control line on each side allowed for easy helm adjustments and avoided recurring each line forward to the complication of a 2nd winch to accommodate the foresail and mainsail at the same time if needed.

We still have things to adjust and tweak. It seems a bit more difficult to hold a wing-on-wing position than before but there’s no careening boom to worry about. The furler drum exit angle requires running the furling line through a block attached to the outside shroud. Overall, with no boom, furling sails and the several control lines that allow us to adjust the exposed square footage to balance the helm at all tacks, the boat feels almost entirely different. It’s better at managing a close-hauled tack without a weather helm, and we get decent speed with just the main in moderate wind, which we rarely accomplished before. Rig management is simpler once one gets used to the nuances. Would it work on bigger boats? For anything above 30-32’ LOA, as most sails require winching to manage, a power furler could allow it to be considered.

At the end of the day, for under $2000, it wasn’t too expensive, we did most of it ourselves, and although we could put it back to the way it was if desired, with many advantages and ease of use in comparison, the old rig is a bad memory rapidly fading into the past. The MacGregor is like countless other small sloops — we wonder which of those might benefit from a boomless, furling rig?

Biographies:

Jeffrey E. Arle, MD, PhD, neurosurgeon, Associate Chief of Neurosurgery, and neuroscientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Associate Professor Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

Jeff’s mother sold his childhood home and moved them onto a 40’ Grand Banks trawler in Essex, CT. Jeff learned sailing in the Les Glenans program in Brittany, founded by intrepid French Resistance fighters just after World War II who learned the art from local fishermen and sailors. It was all in French using small, heavy wooden sloops and no motors, two weeks of 10-hour days in squirrelly currents, rocks, and islands in the Brehat archipelago at the west end of the English Channel. Jeff acquired more sail experience sailing and crewing, for example, in Greece, and returning a race boat from Bermuda to Newport.

Kristen W. Carlson, neuroscientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

Kris learned to sail on a 16’ Cape Cod Mercury sloop with his dad on Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts, and similar craft at Community Boating on Boston’s Charles River. Later he bought a 26’ Thunderbird, a fast, hard-chine sloop with a 4’ keel but lightweight plywood construction covered with a fiberglass skin. He sailed 5 years on a 31’ Hobie monohull owned by a family friend in Lake Winnipesaukee, NH, and Portsmouth, RI.