Sentence meaning

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CTAPTPEK
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Sentence meaning

Post by CTAPTPEK »

Hello! I'm now reading "The Twenty-One Balloons" by William Pène du Bois and there is a sentence that I cannot understand. It is:
"Only the need for a boom was absent from this compact invention."
For more context, there is an abstract describing how the characters manage their flying invention (which is made of small boats and parts connecting them) and take it apart after landing on water to sail back to the island:
"They all unscrewed their poles except one boy, the boy who gave the commands. He pulled his pole in with the hub still attached to it, unscrewed the hub in his boat, and put it away in a separate locker. Now that they each had their masts, it was a simple problem to put them into the mast holes. Mr. F. and I did our best to work as efficiently as any of the other crew members. Soon the mainsail was rigged up and we were ready to sail back to the Island. Only the need for a boom was absent from this compact invention."

Is "the need for a boom" a saying or something? I just cannot comprehend this whole sentence...
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Joe
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Re: Sentence meaning

Post by Joe »

In my understanding, as a non-sailor, and in this context, a boom would be the horizontal bar along the bottom edge of a sail,
"We are not wholly bad or good, who live our lives under Milk Wood :-| " — Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

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