Boom brake/preventer

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I recently sailed down the WA coast chased by a near gale, and I resisted using a preventer on my Beneteau First 38. I did suffer a few unintended gybes, but the main was double reefed, so they didn't seem that serious. Oddly enough, all the gybes occurred right after a watch change, so maybe I need to introduce a "warmup" time for the new helmsman! I acquired a climbing "figure 8" figuring I'd rig something for next time, and am still wrestling over the idea.

First, I know there are some large forces involved in a gybe, and it's not clear to me that any attachment point is up to the task. My 38 has a pretty beefy toerail, but I can imagine bending it. My single chain plate is also pretty overbuilt, but it doesn't have an easy attachment point, and a few thousand pounds to the side will probably induce some deck leaks. A dedicated pad eye is another less than ideal alternative.

Second, I was thinking of rigging the figure 8, then using a block on the boom to tighten the contraption (The Gyb'easys "alternative rigging"). I've read suggestions to use nylon line to get some stretch, but I have no idea what Gyb'flex is, and whether nylon is preferable to regular dacron braid for the actual bridal.

My inclination is to skip the whole thing and provide some sort of snubber on the mainsheet, so that a gybe doesn't break a block and throw the boom into the shrouds, leading to some sort of mast nightmare. On my recent trip, one of the gybes did pull the dead end of the mainsheet from it's pad eye (the D shackle loosened and opened), but as it was knotted, it just got caught in the boom block, lengthening the sheet by a few feet. Could have been worse.

Any advice?