Absolutely no personal experience whatsoever but $70 for an Aeron base vs Chinooks topline base at $120 ............... hmmmm.

However their booms are cheap and get rave reviews from many people.

On the extensions I HAD a rdm north power xt which failed on me (between 2 pin holes (vertically shearing not normal horizontal snap...), have been using an aeron rdm carbom extension 46cm since, and hasn't had a single issue, using it for wave sails (severne) and solid shorebreak conditions at 28-32cm extension 90% of the time..... and at 10cm 10% of the time......

As for mast base, i'm using a NP europin base which doesn't have any issues to date..... 12months and counting with no real signs of degradation or weakness yet...
- BTW my NP europin is plastic also and gets a flogging...

Aeron seem to be making alot of accesories that are being noted for thier durability, i'd be suprised if the mast bases were duds, and if they were, i'm sure they'd get onto it and fix it, if they had stock when I got my MB i'd probably have gotten one...

With Aeron customer service, had an issue with my boom (mast clamp failed at boom conection) and they replaced my boom on the spot, and then supplied me with an improved heavy duty clamped that adressed and fixed the problem within a week...

Chinook have been around and maybe refined their development of bases over the years, but even they have had issues with their products over they years. I think its more a QC issue when if comes to parts failing, and these companies have to be up to the task of replacement and improving their products or they'd go bust. Its not a huge market and last thing they want would be to loose their market share over dud products, also the price difference may be due to the manufacturing location,

Aeron are ex thailand (same place as severne bases and extensions) and this may be why they are 2/3rds or less the price of chinook (ex USA). -

As for europins failing, i'd be interested in finding out where the point of failure is... is it the tendon, the pin to tendon connection (to pin or base bolt- ie plastic bit) or is it the pin itself??? - in 15 years of sailing, i've had one mast base fail and that was the tendon (rubber bit) and that was 13 years ago - it failed cause it was 5 years old, second hand, the materials were inferiour to todays standards oh and I was young and didn't check my gear for wear and tear....

KMAN5000 said...


As for europins failing, i'd be interested in finding out where the point of failure is... is it the tendon, the pin to tendon connection (to pin or base bolt- ie plastic bit) or is it the pin itself??? - in 15 years of sailing, i've had one mast base fail and that was the tendon (rubber bit) and that was 13 years ago - it failed cause it was 5 years old, second hand, the materials were inferiour to todays standards oh and I was young and didn't check my gear for wear and tear....

Re europin failures, I chose not to join onto the recent Seabreeze topic (Tendon Mast Base + Euro Style Pin = Trouble) at the link below as I thought my query about Aeron bases was really worth another topic, though it did get me thinking if plastic base fittings are structurally inferior to solid metal base fittings especially when your kit is getting a regular flogging:

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=58854

(reason why I picked on Aeron bases and rdm extensions is because I just recently purchased them!).