Reef Lines in the Boom

Homemade Rigger's Implements.  There is a 16' rod in my right hand and a crochet hook in the left hand.

When you do something dumb sometimes it forces a burst of creativity.  Earlier in the year I was trying to replace a frayed reef line.  I accidentally pulled the line all the way through the boom. How was I going to re rove the new line through the enclosed boom with only small holes for the pulleys at each end? I suppose that riggers have specialized implements for this task, but I didn't.

After a number of false starts I hit upon using an extra long dowel to push a light line down the boom.  The line was taped onto  the dowel with a loop on the end. The extra long dowel is shown above.  I made it by duct taping four regular wooden dowels (4' x 5/8") that I had purchased at Home Depot for 91 cents each. One of Jan's crochet hooks was borrowed in order to fish out the line when it arrived at the end of the boom. A pair of wire ties provided a lead to guide the light line over the pulley. Finally the light line was sewn to the reef line (end for end) and pulled back through the boom.

You can see from the grin in the photo that I felt pretty good about the project.  But in truth I had to spend about 6 hours undoing 10 seconds of thoughtlessness. On the other hand 6 hours is a fairly light penitence compared to some of my other 10 seconds of screw ups.