A Broken Gooseneck

While I was doing some unrelated work on my boat, I noticed that the gooseneck had broken clean in two – the broken half was just sitting loose on top of the boom fitting. It must have broken the previous time we went out and just sat there during the race and/or trip back into the harbour, completely blind luck that nothing more broke and that the broken piece stayed where it was.

The break ran right through the casting, clearly it had wear and was cracked for a long time, only a small bit of connected metal remained when it failed entirely.

Racing without a boom

There was no way that we were going to be able to get the gooseneck repaired before the race and missing it was not an option. So, we took the boom off and tried to sail without it. It worked much better than expected, but trying to gybe took all 5 of us on the boat for one sail which was just not viable when we also needed to adjust a genoa or spinnaker. It was certainly an interesting experience though.

Repair or replace

Without having a clear plan to repair the gooseneck I both called a local machinist John Gleason (Glease Manufacturing) and Klacko Spars. Klacko said they had a stainless replacement and that they would get back to me, but they never did and I was not able to get ahold of them after the initial call.

Mr. Gleason though got back to me right away and I was able to drop off the broken part and the boom components the next day. His proposed repair was to cut off the rest of the broken part and replace it all with a new piece of aluminium to ensure that it would not break again. He also fit bronze bushings in both the new ear and the original one, and refurbished the boom-side fittings. It was done within a week and back on the boat in time for the next race.