Reply To: Boom Rules Anomaly
In order to answer this ‘question’ I should first point out the process in which a Rule might be changed.
First off, an idea is suggested to the Technical Committee. They then spend a lot of time discussing this change and getting any wording correct. The Proposal is then sent to the Secretary who publishes it with the next AGM agenda. National Associations then have 8 weeks to discuss the proposal and come up with a decision. At the AGM the Rule is voted on by all member nations present.
The boom Rule was no exception. The Rule was passed at the 2012 AGM with 8 votes for and none against. To be discussing this change at such a late date means that either your National Association did not discuss the proposal with its members or that you did not take part in the discussion at the time. Either way, here is an explanation.
When the new mast Rules came into effect in 2003 a new Rule was introduced specifying the position of the gooseneck hole; that is, its centre should be 37mm +/- 2mm from the aft face of the spar. At the time the majority of mast makers had no idea what was meant by aft face of the spar, and so placed their gooseneck holes at 39mm from the aft face of the mast section itself. When I checked masts at the 2005 worlds the only legal masts were the Danish masts from Pedersen. Slowly the mast builders got it correct but this left a lot of masts still out of class, including all the old alloy masts. I don’t know the history of including this Rule and I don’t know why a new Rule was introduced that made alloy masts out of class.
Move on a few years and the next generation of masts were being built and sailors were turning up to Worlds with 2 masts (one legal and one not). Now, as the boom outer limit is measured from the aft face of the spar, the sailor’s boom would measure with one mast and not the other. This meant that booms were not interchangeable between masts as the holes in the mast were in different places. Obviously a silly situation to be in! Either a boom should measure or it doesn’t.
By 2011 most masts had the gooseneck hole in the correct place and these were becoming the majority. It was suggested that we follow the lead of the Finn class and measure the boom outer limit mark from the hole in the boom. This would mean that a boom is always legal no matter what mast it was put on. It also makes event measuring and manufacturing a lot easier. As a side Rule to this proposal we also changed the 37 +/- 2mm to a 39mm max. This would make all older masts legal. The fact remained however that using an older mast would result in a marginally shorter effective boom length. This was also discussed at length in the Technical Committee. Most booms affected would only have 15mm less length and this was considered a necessary and satisfactory side effect. This was actually reduced to 14mm by picking 2640mm as the outer limit length, although this was actually done to have a round number rather than what would seem to be a strange choice at 2641mm.
Now that we have a standard system and manufacturers are following the correct methods, any anomalies should get less and less. The measurement form is lagging behind the Rule updates but I’m afraid that’s just a consequence of being an amateur class where we all have limited time. It will get updated at some point.
Alistair
