Amateur Aeron V-Grip Boom Review

Just had two weeks in Hatteras with lots of winds using a couple of new 140-190 Aeron V-Grip continuous alloy booms purchased at 2-Rad in Quebec.

The summary: I like them.

It is quite simple: if you have never been a fan on splashing out $500+ on carbon but have been tempted by the extra inherent stiffness, these might be for you. I've always ridden alloy booms and have maybe, at most, bent or broken one on average every couple of years. I'm 165-175lbs and I play fairly hard on the gear - get catapulted, land on them, loop them, etc...

From what I can tell, by feel only (not having weighed them), they are a touch heavier, than say the newly released Chinook Pro-Alloy, or most other standard booms out there. This is reasonably to be expected, as there is some additional material in the tube cross-section, so the stiffness does come at a small price. But, the weight never bothered me at all, if indeed they are heavier at all. Maybe one day I can actually weigh them side by side with others to do a factual comparison.

What about the V-Grip shape? Well - I found it neither irritating, nor beneficial in terms of hand/forearm stress/strain and palm and finger blistering (something us less-frequent sailors have to deal with when we go on intensive windsurf holidays). I would not say I prefer the v-grip cross-sectional shape any better or worse over plain round. i.e. it's pretty neutral.

They are definitely stiff. Not sure how they compare to carbon, but if all you have ridden prior to these is typical two-piece arm alloy booms, then stepping to continuous (one-piece tube) V-grip shape is definitely a large improvement. I cannot say how much simply the continuous tube would have added in terms of stiffness...

Oh, did I mention the boom head? I really like it! Since switching to RDMs nearly 7 yrs ago now, a problem has always been the need for a shim. I did ride a couple of older Chinook Triple-Clamps without shims and crushed two RDMs trying to get them to grip enough without dropping while riding. So, since then, I have always used shims in fear of repeating the same mistake. But, the Aeron's have such an excellent RDM adaptor included in the boom head, that there is no more need for after-market shims!! YEAH!! I noticed while gazing at the new Chinook Pro-Alloy's in Ocean Air in Avon, that they also appear to have a decently revamped boom head as well with a good integrated RDM shim. Similar looking in fact, but maybe only a touch less beefy looking.

In the end, yes, I definitely like them and look forward to putting on lots of mileage. If anyone wants a few more details, photos or more scrutinous opinion on specific features, let me know. As you can tell, I'm not very techy in my description and analysis but this is me. If I would have had a few different booms to compare side-by-side, perhaps I could offer a bit more...

UPDATE (Jul6-10):

While I can say I am pretty satisfied with the stiffness, boom head, tube shape etc... there is one item that I foresee becoming a problem. The grip is already starting to wear through around my harness line straps. I'm using pretty industry-standard lines, DaKine fixed lines to be precise, and the area around where they attach to the boom is already getting mangled. I suspect this will become a problem, as I need to move them around for various sail sizes...