What is this large pin at the gooseneck?

[svonadym]

Hey y'all! Thanks in advance for helping me understand my boat more. The boat is a '67 Alberg 30, new to me, and very much in need of TLC. On the boom at the gooseneck, there is a large pin (shaft?) sticking out each side of the boom, with a smaller pin installed through the larger pin's diameter. What are these used for? They appear to be stationary (they don't roll and they don't slide in or out) and the smaller (retaining?) pin doesn't budge either. Any help is appreciated. Hopefully the pictures clarify what I'm talking about.

[Reefmagnet]

Is the profile of the boom round? It could be a furling mechanism.

[Jim Cate]

Yep, that is an old "roll up around the boom" reefing system, once quite popular. A crank handle was placed over the shaft and the pin engaged slots in the handle. Handle turned and a worm gear inside the gooseneck engaged a gear coupled to the boom, and as you turned the crank, the boom rotated, rolling up the sail like a window shade.

The drwback was that the sail shape when reefed was horrible, and the system soon fell by the wayside.

If you can't rotate the shaft, it is likely seized by corrosion internally. IMO, not worth trying to repair, for slab reefing is so much better in all ways.

Jim

[svHyLyte]

It appears to be the shaft of a worm gear to roll the boom for furling the main. Somewhere on the boat there is, or was, a crank handle, somewhat like a winch handle but, in lieu of a winch "bit", a freely spinning end piece with a center pin in it and two opposing slots on the outer sleeve that engage the transverse pins in the ends of the gear shaft through the bottom of the boom, which can be approached from either side of the mast. Roller furling mains actually worked pretty well so long as there wasn't much of a roach in the sail. They were common in the mid-50's through late '60's but gave way to slab reefing which was more performance oriented.

FWIW...

[svonadym]

Thanks a bunch for the quick responses. That's very helpful. I'll definitely be using slab reefing once I get her back ship-shape, but it's good to know what I've got.

[GILow]

I concede the furled shape from these systems is pretty crappy but I got on really well with dad’s boom furling on his Van de Stadt 27, very similar to one pictured, and the crude but effective direct crank system on my Austral 20 was good too.

I know at least one of the respondents so far is a complete boat-speed-freak so his comments must be filtered with this understanding. [emoji6]. He knows who I am talking about.

[dfelsent]

I second the roller reef bit. The main sheet for these systems was either on a swivel on the aft end of the boom or on a claw with rollers that damaged the sail when reefing.
I’d guess you have end boom sheeting and maybe a swivel fitting back there.
Go for slab (jiffy) reefing, don’t worry about the roller reefing, maybe improve the outhaul because you don’t need to think about the boom end swivel.
I did that with my 1970 Redwing 30 and never looked back.
My club’s committee boat is the Carl Alberg. His designs are well respected in these parts, ie his adopted home port Marblehead Mass.

[Orion Jim]

Carl Alberg, the patron saint of all Cape Dory owners....

[MartinR]

Actually, this does work reasonable well, but you have to fill the roll with sail bags or something while reefing otherwise the sail will become very baggy. Slab reefing is better, but this is almost a cult fitting;-)

[a64pilot]

My inboom curling system seems to work pretty well, better it seems than in mast on the same boat, cause I assume I can have full battens and pretty good roach.
I’m not sure why rolling around the boom as opposed to rolling within the boom makes much difference?

Now I’m not saying it’s as good performance wise, but it seems to be at lest as good as the far more widely used in mast furling.

I do think that there is less forgiveness in how a sail is cut, it has to be cut to allow the boom in my case to be at 95 degrees, not 90.

[nhschneider]

I recall my father had a boat that had something identical and, if I remember correctly, he used it to furl the sail but not for reefing. However, I was a young child at the time and my memories are sometimes indistinct between reality and fantasy.

Fair winds and calm seas.

[MartinR]

I had two of these systems and it is not worse than the in-boom furlers, but more reliable, and better than in-mast furling.

[roverhi]

The old style roller reefing is the spawn of the devil. It's slow to reef, creates the exact opposite sail shape you want, stretches out the leech of the sail, and impossible to have mid boom sheeting or a vang when reefed. As you roll the sail down you get big ball of luff rope at the goose neck, the middle develop a hug paunch and leech gets super tight. That puts all the downward force on the sail on the leech stretching it out. With the sail reefed there is no way to attach mid boom sheeting or a vang other than a C shaped claw that slipped on the boom from the end and over the rolled sail. The Claw would wear holes in the sail in short order. For the life of me can't figure out why it was ever invented as slab reefing has every advantage over roller furling.

The old form of roller reefing is not inboom roller reefing. That relatively new invention solves the problems of the old roller reefing for everything except cost, added mechanical complexity, finicky boom positoning and still requires to go to the mast to reef.

[a64pilot]

You don’t leave the cockpit to reef the main in an inboom furling System.
You do have to turn into the wind though, you might can do to without turning, but I think the stress would be excessive so I haven’t tried.

[Don C L]

Hey that’s my gooseneck too! Gotta love the classics. I see you have track for a trysail too!