Rigging for trade wind passages
Sailing broad off or dead downwind in the trades is a joy, but there is always the danger of an inadvertent gybe. I know this from bitter experience; when I bought my most famous yacht, the 46ft engineless cutter Iolaire, built 1905, I realized that her heavy 24ft-long 5in-diameter boom was a real widow maker. It took a few years to solve the problem.
By the early 1960s I had worked out a fool-proof easily rigged, easily un-rigged main boom preventer.
Preventer set up
It is so organised that to rig it or take it down, no one has to go forward of the mast or fight to attach anything to the end of the main boom.
To a bail on the end of the boom, I attached a big becket block. To the becket I attached a wire (today I would use a Dyneema line) that reached to within about a foot of the gooseneck. The end of the wire was secured to the gooseneck with a light line.
Through the becket block I ran a line, both ends of which were tied off to the gooseneck.
On the end of the bowsprit, I attached two blocks through which I ran two lines to act as spinnaker pole or whisker pole foreguys. One end had a snap shackle, which was passed around the life-line stanchion abreast of
