Centreboard Downhaul

[Claus Riepe]

On the SeaRaider I had a bungee cord loop to hold the board down, I suspect that is the standard procedure for most Swallowboats.

That went well enough through all the races of last year, until we went aground hard (on sand) last week when the bungee cord broke. Instead of replacing that I now fitted a regular downhaul rope, with that rope going through an auto-releasing Clamcleat. Works better than the bungee cord, because we can now finetune the board trim and fasten the board in every angle position.
We were fun racing against another boat last weekend, quite open for some time, only adjusting the board to a different angle finally gave us the edge.

Claus

[Paul Cross]

Claus

I finaly have the ideal solution (for me anyway) A downhaul rope through an auto-release clamcleat connected to the centerboard via a bungee cord loop.

This allows infinite easy adjustment of the centerboard and provides a little "stretch" when working uphaul against downhaul. This feels really good and allows the centerboard to touch ground and give a little unless you hit the bottom hard when the cleat releases.

Although our little Storm 15 is not in the same league as your flotilla, there do seem to be relatively large gains to be made downwind by adjusting both centerboard and rudder.

Regards
PC