“Aeron V-Grip” – The Future Of Booms?
Aeron V-Grip
Remember a few years back when Aeron revolutionised booms with their rounded front end? Well they’ve been innovating again, here at Surfstore we can now present to you their latest idea. The V-Grip (Store link). See Aerons web page here.
What is “V-Grip” I hear you ask?
V-Grip is their latest range of booms with a twist, well a V to be specific. The booms feature an interesting ergonomic “V” shaped grip, which according to Aeron reduces arm fatigue by 40% compared to your average tubular boom, and also improves rig control. Meaning more time out on the water and better sessions too!
Lets Get Techy
The V-Grip is also extra stiff due to the additional void in the tube. 
The extra stiffness gives you a direct comparator to the carbon series of booms. If you were to compare stiffness you wouldnt be able to notice the difference in the smaller two of their V-Grip range. This is also partly due to the newly forged rear end of the boom. Forging, rather than traditional extrusion gives a much stiffer end product and when combined with heat treatment (which the Aeron boom will have undergone) will add to the stiffness due to the newly crystalised structure of the aluminium.
We’ve only had these in a day and allready they are going, so grab one while you can! John Mac from the store managed to get out last Sunday at the Aberdovey demo on one of these and has found that it really does make your sailing more comfortable and rates them highly!
Sizes available are: 140-190cm, 160-210cm, 180-230cm and 200-250cm. All aluminium & come with RDM adapters. Order them up to be with you within a couple of days! See here.
Neil Pryde 2010 Booms
But remember, Aeron arn’t the only ones who have been innovating. With the introduction of Neil Pryde’s 2010 range of booms, they also bring increased stiffness without the cost of carbon. They have introduced two new features, one standard and one optional.
The new standard feature is their “pressure flow forged” boom head. Totally eliminating their own continious front end boom innovation, they have forged an ultra stong front end and then inserted the boom arms into it. This makes for a whole new stiffness for alluminium booms and never-before-seen stiffness for carbon booms.
Their optional feature is the “S-Bend – New School” or “wide” as it is called on our website. The “S-shape” follows “simple physics. It’s simple really; as wind pressure increases, a straight or convex boom effectively becomes shorter as it bends in response to increasing sail load, makingthe sail fuller, less efficient and harder to manage.” Says Neil Pryde.
I myself actually own two of the smaller X3′s, and rate them! They are seriously stiff compared to any other aluminium boom on the market (except for Aeron’s “V-Grip” which I think is just as stiff).
Neil Pryde do a range of booms, X3 (aluminium), X6 (Aluminium front, carbon rear end) and X9 (carbon throughout). See here.
But dont worry if you’re not up for all this future stuff, we stock a full range of most booms too which are futureproof. See here.
