Time to re-engineer the CB cable system

[burnsbayhome]

We just got our recently purchased DSII (1972? Hull No. 3048) into the shallow creek near our house and motored out to the Bay but the centerboard is apparently stuck, and the wind was pretty stiff so we returned to the dock. We had not checked the cb while it was on the trailer because the hull around the cb was resting on one of the cross pieces.

We have not seen our particular cb cable arrangement described anywhere. There is just one that emerges inside the cuddy from a hole at the fore edge of the cb trunk. It is attached to a single line that runs through two blocks and back through a hole in the cuddy bulkhead to a cleat on the starboard side of the trunk. We'd appreciate a full description of how this setup is supposed to work, if anyone knows. Is the cb just supposed to fall freely after the cable is loosed? There's only about 8 or 9 inches of available travel length on the cable inside the cuddy.

Before reading the discussions here, I had already thought of drilling a hole in the top of the trunk and tryng to push the CB down with a rod, then plugging the hole if the procedure works and the cable gets the cb back up. Any reason not to try that? We are reluctant to haul the boat out after all our work getting it into the water and rigged.

Burns