Boom/Cunningham setup

[XPatriot]

I'm trying to sort out various things that don't make a lot of sense to me.

I took my boat out several times last year after purchasing it around the end of the sailing season and now am actually getting her where I feel she needs to be.

One thing I'm working on is the boom/cunningham/gooseneck set up.

PO had ignored the Cunningham Cringle and just added a slug there. This I have removed.

The way that the rest of the area is set up (see picture) is that there is an eye hole below the gooseneck. There is a line fed through a clamcleat that holds the boom down. Basically the boom floats apart from this line and there is a screw below the gooseneck the holds the boom up when the main is down.

I have a cleat on either side of the mast- one for the jib halyard, one for the main halyard. That's it. There is an eye at the base of the boom but the vang uses this.

Basically I feel the clam cleat should be for the cunningham line, but then is the boom OK to float? I can't believe a 34 year old boat has one less attachment point on the mast and I'm the first one to be stumped by this. The main is hardly new, so it's not like I just added a sail with a Cunningham cringle.

Advice or (as I always ask) a cheap solution to help me have this set up correctly?

Thanks!!


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[Faster]

This is a variation on the cunningham that is pretty typical of some smaller boats. Rather than pull down the cunningham cringle, the entire boom is pulled down to create the necessary luff tension.

There should be a slug or some limit to how much the boom drops when the main comes down, and then when hoisted the main goes right to the top (or the black band if there is one) and then the luff is tensioned by pulling the boom back down.

If the sail is rigged with a cunningham cringle then I'd consider making the boom fixed and using a normal cunningham setup. Just make sure the boom is low enough to allow proper full hoist of the sail prior to using the 'sly pig'