DaySailer.org Forum

After numerous attempts to fix and refix my centerboard I have finally given up. My question, can I sail safety and not capsize without using the board? My plan would be to just leave it up. I am not a racer and I know it will not be the most effective way to sail. I just want to cruise and work on my skills. Any advice would be appreciated.

Welcome to the Daysailer Newbie Fleet. We really should get t-shirts, or club pennants, or something.

I can tell you exactly what will happen if you don't lower the centerboard. The boat will turn away from the wind, no matter what you do with the sail or the rudder. If you've got a good strong motor, say 3 hp, you can fight the turns and keep rotating the boat into what you hope is a good angle wind-wise, but you'll have to continue fighting the turns, because the boat will keep turning away from the wind no matter what you do.

Traditional sailing wisdom says the boat should just slip sideways if you try any kind of upwind sailing with the centerboard up. By "upwind sailing" I mean a beam reach or anything closer into the wind. Traditional sailing wisdom will be wrong; the boat will just keep turning away from the wind and frustrate you.

If you're lucky, your crew will ask, in a charming way, "Did you remember to lower the centerboard?" and you'll be reminded of why you married her as you sail away.

As frustrating as your centerboard is its use is essential to the proper functioning of the boat. It is possible to sail safely and to develop sailing skills without the centerboard. But the wind, water, weather, and geographic conditions in which this is true are very limited. The skills that can be learned will be likewise limited. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to learn all of the skills essential to sailing. Also, if conditions change, as they inevitably will, you may very well find yourself stuck in a situation in which it is very difficult to sail effectively or safely.

If you describe the problems you are having with the centerboard maybe people on the forum can help you solve them and make the board functional.

willyhays makes a good point about help with centerboards. There are many posts about centerboard problems and their solutions here.

What model and year of Daysailer do you have?

Right. You have to use the board, there are several things that characteristically go wrong with Day Sailer centerboards, and they are so characteristic that there are lots of resources on fixing them, including complete replacement kits. All we need to know is the litany of your woes, and the advice will flow in like water through an improperly sealed CB pivot bolt.

Leaving the CB up will in fact reduce your risk of capsizing.

Here is a diagram:


[click to enlarge]

As the wind pushes on your sail, the CB resists the hull drifting to leeward. Your weight helps the boat stay level, but if the wind is too strong, the boat can "trip" over the CB. With the CB raised, the boat would simply slide to leeward.

That's half the story.

The other half is that the rudder needs the CB as a "pivot" point around which to turn the boat. With the CB up, there's no longer that central pivot and the bow will freely slide downwind.

Now, going downwind, you don't use the CB (even when it is working properly). You want the bow to point downwind, after all, and for small angles to either side of downwind, the immersed part of the hull can make up for that missing pivot. If you leave the CB down, it will slow you a bit (you might not care if you don't race) but it will also be a bit of a trip hazard, should a wind-gust come unexpectedly more from the side, but in lighter winds that would be secondary.

However, most importantly, without using your CB you are unlikely to be able to sail across the wind or upwind at all.

In fact, if you keep your boat on a dock or mooring, leaving the CB fixed in the down position would be the most versatile (except that it's not that good for the CB to be down when not in use).

To add one reason for the centerboard being down to help from capsizing, I use it downwind while planing. When a gust hits and you're being healed over, it allows you to steer down quickly to get the boat under the rig and righted. Otherwise, with all the force out to leeward the boat would round up and be more likely to capsize. The faster you go the better this works and the more critical it is to use this technique. If you watch really fast boats, like the 49ers, go downwind you can observe this serpentine path that they take to keep the boats upright.

Yeah, I know this is probably not relevant to the original question. However, I agree with everyone that you want to have a working centerboard, in fact it's pretty much imperative to the enjoyment of the boat.