Not really sure if it really needs maintenance but I decided to pull ours apart to learn how it works and see if anything needed to be replaced.
I believe this is the original boom vang on our CS34 sailboat. I don’t know too much about it other than the original owner made some comment about adjusting or detaching when running downwind to allow the boom to swing out more. Still haven’t figured out exactly what that means.
I wasn’t sure what to expect or even how to take it apart. There are rivets through the aluminum pole that I didn’t want to drill out.
I loosened all of the ropes and it then just easily slid apart and revealed its simplicity. There are no hydraulics, just a single spring inside.
Not much to “maintain” with this. I just made sure there were no cracks, gave everything a quick clean up and then sprayed it with some silicon oil and put it all back together.
This was one of those amazing projects where there were no hidden surprises and amount of time needed was much less than I was expecting. Why can’t all my projects be like this!?
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