Date: 8/1/2010
Name: Chris Kottaridis
email: chriskot@quietwind.net
subject:Re: stuck centerboard
I had a problem where the trailer was such that it kind of jammed the centerboard up into the box. When I got it off the trailer into the water and tried to loosen the winch to drop it down, it wouldn't drop on it's own weight.I took about a 6' stick that fits into the cockpit drainage hole and had to bang on the centerboard through the hole to get it to drop. You want to make sure the board fits through the cockpit drainage hole but is big enough to push on the centerboard without wedging between the centerboard and the side of the center board box.
One time it took a pretty hard bang to get it to drop. The other times it didn't take much at all to loosen it.
One thing you'll want to do is loosen the centerboard cable a bit so it can drop some. But then put the winch in a locked position so when you work the centerboard loose it doesn't swing all the way down full speed and bang against the bumper. Figured that out the hard way of course by having the winch in free run mode the first time I tried this. It sounds really bad if that happens but so far nothing has come of it. If you just loosen the winch cable a turn or two and then put the winch in lock mode when you knock the centerboard free the cable will catch it and it'll only drop a couple of inches depending on how far you've loosened the cable.
I have since adjusted my trailer for the bunk boards to be slightly higher and haven't run into the problem since then. But, I keep a 6 foot board cut about an inch on both sides specifically for this purpose. It happened enough to me until I got the courage to make a change on the trailer, that I still keep it around.
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