Reefing with a sliding gooseneck

[We2Sail]

I have a 27 foot Cherubini designed Hunter that has a sliding gooseneck which is raised when reefed.

My question is: Is there any performance or safety issue if the boom is reefed by raising it 18 inches (more/less) rather than in it's normal sailing position?

The boom is a Kenyon boom, not sure what the sloop rig is or the mast.

The "T" track is about 2 feet long and the gooseneck slides on it. The sail track is a recessed "T" shape slug that terminates at the top of the boom slide track. (I read in another post that some of these were designed as a roller furling boom. There is no mechanism to indicate if this was possible and the end of the boom clearly would not be rotatable.)

The boat originally had a topping lift that got destroyed in a storm, I decided to replace the topping lift with a boom-kicker and a vang. The problem with this configuration, if the boom is lifted through more than about 12 inches, the boomkicker falls out of it's groove.

If I do not raise the boom, I need to remove the three (two?) lowest sail track sliders from their track to bring the sail down far enough to catch the horns with the cringle to hold the sail in it's place. Needless to say, this process is not very desirable and a real safety pain if I waited too long to reef.

It appears, if I can remove the slider and replace it with a fixed gooseneck (somehow), then the boom-kicker stays in place and none of the sail slides need to be removed to reef.

However, on the other hand, if there is no significant difference in performance or safety, I can continue to use my spare halyard as a makeshift topping lift and save all that other aggravation and costs.

Bob