Gooseneck Height Problem

[zaldog]

Hello all, I have a problem with my Gosseneck on my Ericson 27 it will not stay up high enough? Keeps sliding down about 3-5"? Any Ideas? I can not reef becasue of this or use the cunningham and wonder if I am aslo missing out on performance. I have looked at other E27's in my marina and their gooseneck is at about where the mast winch is. Any help greatly appreciated.

[pdxgrebe]

I have a 35 year old boat that came with the roller boom furling, and a boom that moved up and down along the mast. The guy I bought the boat from had replaced a flat head screw on the track on the mast with a round head screw to prevent the movement of the boom when he switched over to jiffy reefing. When I bought the boat I had a new fixed gooseneck welded up, and I thru bolted to the mast (I also tapped the srew wholes in the mast). There's not going to be any movement up and down in the boom unless something breaks.

It sounds like you are in a simular situation.
Rick

[sailingdog]

Zaldog-

Is there any reason you need to have the boom be adjustable in height? If the answer is no, then I would recommend you do something similar to what PDXgrebe has suggested or done.

I am also a bit curious as to how your cunningham is rigged, that the gooseneck moving would prevent you from being able to use it. I can see how it might be affected if the boom was sliding too far up the mast, but not if it was dropping. Or is it just that the movement of the boom is preventing it from tensioning/flattening the sail. In either case, affixing the boom gooseneck to the mast, per PDX's suggestions would fix the problem.

[zaldog]

Thanks PDX, I was thinking I would need to do something like that. Sailingdog the problem is not the boom moving up but down and it will go all the way down to a cleat used to tension the cunningham. Once it is all the way down I have no place to tension it because the bottom of the gooseneck sits on the top of the cleat.

Do you think a sail track stop under the gooseneck would work, or would that not be strong enough?

[sailingdog]

A sailtrack stop under the gooseneck would probably work, considering that most of the forces on the boom are upwards, by the mainsail... not downwards. The major downwards force acting on it is gravity and is just the weight of the sail and boom for the most part.

[US25]

I had the same issue with my old boat, when ever the main halyard was released, the boom would slide down the track. I used a sailtrack stop, but I couldn't just lock it and leave it. After raising the sail, I would have to remove it, so I could use the cunningham to tighten the luff. Then when reefing or dousing, I would have to put the stop back in. Not a great system, and as I found out more than once, those stops don't float.