by Cole » Mon Sep 17, 2018 5:01 pm
Hi, I know this might seem a little late to reply but I am recently new to daysailing and this forum so I thought I would share my input about your great story. I'll give a little background about my first experiences with daysailing.
I bought my boat around mid august, it was my first boat purchase, even though I have been sailing for about 5 years and I am only 14. It is a 1971 O'day Daysailer, I got an amazingly cheap price on it and it needed little work. so after getting everything into working order for about a week my grandfather and I decided to go out. This was going to be his first time on a sailboat and my first time on a Daysailer. I didn't have an outboard motor on the boat at the time so once everything was set up and the boat was tied to the dock and facing into the wind I raised the sails. I untie the bowline from the dock while my grandfather holds on to the bulkhead in the back of the boat, but then he lets go unannounced and faced with steering the boat. It all happens too quick, he tries to steer which leads to him getting stuck in awkward position and we end up stuck on an under water log. A helpful fisherman pushes us of and everything seems ok. We sail across Moriches Bay to Gull island, and stop to eat lunch. I pull up the centerboard, throw the anchor out and drop the sails. we get ready to leave and the centerboard is stuck. we yank as hard as we can but nothing happens. I didn't think to swim under the boat to pull it down manually, but later i would find out that not even that would work. So we struggle to return to the ramp without a center board. We eventually made it back having to throw a long dock line to another fisherman to pull us in, but we made it.
The next day I was determined to find out the problem. I guessed that because the boat is so old the center board was warped and got jammed inside the trunk. what I decided to do was get a cable stopper from the hardware store so that the centerboard wouldn't be able to be pulled up all the way. If you are still having that problem with lowering the centerboard I suggest you try the cable stop. I will add pictures of how it works.