What Are These Horseshoe Looking Things?

[David M]

I think Joe in post 18 nailed it first.

[JoeRobertJr]

I can't take credit. I was just following up on HopCar in post 13.

[HopCar]

Originally Posted by JoeRobertJr

I can't take credit. I was just following up on HopCar in post 13.

I cheated. I sold them back in the seventies but I’ve never used one.

[senormechanico]

Originally Posted by roverhi

And I'll bet RKJ was swearing at it the whole way. Rolling the sail around the boom results in a bar tight leech, a big bag in the middle and a mass of bolt rope around the gooseneck. Had roller reefing on my first boat. First passage hard on the wind across the Molokai Channel in lousy conditions permanently stretched out the brand new main's leech ruining its shape, Sail was so baggy causing heel and control issues finally dropped the main altogether which became the standard practice in lieu of the lousy reefed shape. Have had a couple of boats since with roller furling booms but they were converted to slab reefing. Night and day reefing and the set of the reefed sail. There is a reason that roller reefing died out as soon as an alternative existed. Actually slab reefing is ancient technology, can't figure why anyone went to the trouble of designing the roller boom. It's complicated gearing is prone to corrosion seizing and of course what do you do when the crank handle goes overboard. If you can get a decent setting reef with a roller boom more power to you, I was never so lucky.

Roller reefing the main is one of the reasons we didn't buy an F boat, and instead went with our Dragonfly.
Who wants to stand in front of the mast on a skinny boat when it's getting wild so you can reef? Do your reefing in the cockpit !

[capt jgw]

Originally Posted by HopCar

I’m not a sailor but I think those are boom vangs used on roller furled sails.
The real sailors here will correct me.

Yep, those are for attaching a vang to a roller furling boom. The boom needs to be free to rotate so you can't attach the vang directly. I've had two 1960's boats with roller booms and they both had them

[capt jgw]

Originally Posted by roverhi

It’s a boom claw for a roller reefing boom popular in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Because the reefing wrapped the sail around the boom you couldn’t have things like a vang permanently attached. Used with multi part tackle Vang to the deck. Roller reefing was one of the dumbest things ever invented. Fortunately most of these booms have been converted to slab/jiffy reefing.

One of the first things I did to my current 1969 boat was to add reefing points on the main for slab reefing. Had roller reefing on a previous boat and it plain didn't work.

[dfelsent]

Wow. Everyone got this wrong! Those are rare antique collectible reef and sheet claws worth a lot of money to absolutely no one until a few hundred years from now when a museum will pay .1 worthless currency units (inflation adjusted from now) to get rid of them.

Really slab reefing is sooo much better.

[wesevans]

They are man overboard retrieval equipment. they should also be equipped with a line for retrieval.



The hose shoe design makes it easier to put under your arms than a ring float.

[Old Salty Bill]

Toilet seats!

[Adiona]

We are former sailors here’s our 2 cents. We believe this goes on the boom and it can be a vang, to flatten the sail, or a preventer, with some small boom mod. If you have furling into the mast it needs to be able to slide over the boom from the aft end. And it needs 2 stops of some sort to keep it from sliding fore aft to be an effective preventer. Not every part fits every boat and since this is an aftermarket item it may have been used before curling was installed. A rigger could tell you if it can work with your setup. We chose an easier method for a preventer on our 44’ sailboat. We had the rigger install a large, heavy eye on the bottom of the boom, about half way from end of boom to mast, and used that to clip on block and tackle we assembled that we could clip to the toenail and the boom eye. Easy on and off, cheap, easy to store safety equipment. We had also planned to use it to retrieve crew overboard, since it had clips on both ends - one to clip on the life jacket of the person in the water, and one to clip onto anything else on the boat. And a block and tackle to make it easy to haul someone in. Practice this, label it and know it cold, because there’s no time to figure it out when you really need it.

[Contest 48]

Lot to be said for round boom furling, lot safer and better shaped sail than in mast and can be quicker and easier than "jiffy" reefing in a blow. Not just RNJ, Eric Hiscock in his book Two Yachts, Two Voyages regretted specifying Jiffy on Wanderer V rather than the roller gear they had had on previous boats.

Had roller and boom claw on our first 2 boats, worked well as long as you ensured the leech did not ride forward. (Brilliant when you'd left it a bit late and had to reduce sail quick.) Next boat had slab/jiffy, easier to produce good shaped sail but much slower, longer off the wind and more dangerous flogging of sail and reefing lines (especially if you had the lines in for the next two reefs) for a short handed crew.

[Down East]

I concur
Saw these on older boats as a kid for the Vang on boats with boom roller reefing.

[Rendova]

Yes in the old days they were used for boom roller furling. The booms back then had a hand crank at the goose neck which rotated the boom. The main sheet was attached to the end of the boom and it rotated freely. Now I am not sure what they were called but they were used for reefing and I guess as a preventor. This rig was on my parents boat which was built in the 50's. Just standard equipment for the day.

[Normanskier]

Looks like a speed feeder when hoisting your jib. Typically used when racing. Mine look a little different but same principal. Tie the feeder below the access point on your forestay and hoist away.

[Reb Blanchard]

It's a reefing claw...used to gather up the mainsail on a roller reefing boom. I have one also, but my main was changed to jiffy reefing before I purchased it.

Reb
S/V Siren Song
1966 Ted Hood Auxiliary Racing Sloop