Installing The Hardware On My Merlin Rocket Boom

My Merlin Rocket sailboat boom is a $20 barn yard find in a Texas Hill Country Ranch, not 20 miles from where I lived. Now, I searched and researched for a carbon fiber boom but there weren’t any available nearby me at the time and rather than ordering a custom boom I started to consider an aluminum boom.

While searching one of the local online selling lists, I ran into this post from a guy selling parts from his sailboat and who had a used aluminum boom for sale with the dimensions very close to what I needed. I drove to the ranch and upon meeting this Cowboy at his ranch we drove where he had this pile of sailboat parts and hull in really bad shape. And there was the aluminum boom, laying on the mud, dirty and scratched but straight. A hand shake and $20 later, I was on my way home with the aluminum boom on the roof of my SUV.

The first action I took when I arrived home was to remove any/all existing hardware on the mast and give it a good wash to take off all the mud and who knows what else was stuck to it. Fortunately, the boom came from a sailboat that had only been sailed in fresh water.

Next, I drilled an exit hole for the main sail clew out haul control line at 275 mm from the goose neck socket plate and intalled a camcleat over the same location and then installed the block and eye at 125 mm from the goose neck socket plate.

With my Dremel Rotary Tool and metal cutting blade, I proceeded to cut the opening for the clew out haul block at 2575 mm from the goose neck socket plate. I also riveted an eye lead for the spinnaker pole bungees at 2220 mm from the goose neck socket plate. I’ll show it later on a photo of the finished boom.

The aluminum boom was still an ugly aluminum tube not worthy of a Merlin Rocket. Once all holes needed for the hardware were drilled or cut, I sanded down the aluminum mast to smooth out the scratches as much as I could before priming it. I placed a couple of wood sticks at both ends of the mast and then placed the boom over saw horses. I used Zinc Chromate Primer Green to prime the aluminum boom. This product has been tried and tested over the years and it works perfectly for this application. Other primers may be cheaper but don’t yield the same great results on aluminum as this product does. A couple of coats later, this boom was ready for painting.

To match the color of the mast as much as possible, I chose Rust-Oleum 239107 Professional High Performance Enamel Spray Paint in Semi-Gloss Black to pain the boom. It’s been good for freshwater sailing. I’d recommend a different paint for salt water conditions.

A view of the the taped clew out haul block and the riveted eye lead for the spinnaker pole bungees. I love the way it looks after 2 good coats of paint.

The boom end caps went through the same prime and paint treatment. However, the goose neck socket plate required some creativity on my part to make it work. First, I had to find a socket plate to match the oval shape of my boom, which made the search more challenging. So what I ended up doing was glue and screw a round wooden rod encapsulated in epoxy resin and fiberglass to the goose neck socket plate and drilled a hole for the goose neck pin.

Second, I had to rig an internal 2:1 purchase for the main sail clew out haul block so I decided to screw a stainless steel eye/loop strap at the end of the round wooden rod to have a solid tying point inside the boom.