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Went out today in light winds, first light day in a while... Brought the boat up to a sandy beach at a park to let the kids play. It was pretty calm but a powerboat wake pushed the boat broadside up on the sand...its that pretty course sand you get in protected bays. It took both the mate and I to push her back into the water and we had to push the boat broadside to get it back floating. Motored the 8 miles home, get to the canal and the board won't drop. Tried jiggling the boat, going in reverse and tapping the CB trunk...nothing would make it go down. Lots of fun doing a 180 degree turn in a 80 ft wide canal with no CB...a rudder helped though.

I guess getting pushed sideways onto the sand and then us pushing it the other way must have wedged sand/shells into the CB slot. The boat has been in the water for a couple months also so I expect there is some growth to compound things. Anyone have any good tricks to make a stuck CB drop...short of diving the bottom or hauling it out on the trailer?

I wonder if it's possible to insert a metal rod (maybe about 1/4" diameter) through the deck where the cable enters the compression pole, and give a few light taps to the top of the board to encourage it to drop. It might work!

--Mike

My centerboard has stuck a couple of times after bottom painting the trunk and board.

It always worked loose by motoring head first into steep powerboat chop or waves. I try to make the boat pound at about 7 mph. With the cable set loosely it drops after a few minutes of this.

Not sure if that will do the trick if you have a rock jammed in there, but worth a try.

My board used to stick occasionally when sailing out of St. Petersburg due to barnacles attaching themselves to the centerboard trunk. I found that one of two things usually worked. One was to run full astern while turning the wheel from stop to stop and back again. Eventually it would work loose. If not, I would stomp my foot as hard as I could at the aft end of the centerboard trunk (just ahead of the aft dinette seat). I was a little concerned about gelcoat damage but it never happened.

And oh yes. If neither worked, I'd leave the centerboard line with a little bit of slack. (I only had 3 - 4 feet of water in the slip and didn't want the board to dig into the bottom.) When I returned to the boat, the centerboard gods had usually shone on me and the board was unstuck.

Hope one of these works.

Bob Cameron
Spirit of the Wind

I got my centerboard unstuck by passing a rope under the boat starting at the stern until it grabbed the centerboard. It was in a slip and with one person on each side we were able to get the centerboard down.

More of a beaching tip;

If you are beaching where there are a lot of power boat wakes, or the current itself looks to be running into or along the beach, it will help if you drop a stern anchor when you are 50 feet from shore. Be mindful of the rode and don't let it catch in the prop.
This will keep your boat from turning into the beach. It's also a great practice where there is a lot of seagrass growing close in. Rather than to foul your prop while backing out, you pull yourself out past the grass with a cabin winch on the rode. Helps if you have a snatch block at the stern.
SK

I'll definitely never let the boat go up on a beach broadside again like that...this thing is stuck really hard. Normally, I would have gone stern-to, or at least bow-to if I thought there were any hard things to hit (and there were a few larger rocks but I don't think I hit any of them).

Last weekend, I managed to get an aluminum tube (probably about half inch in diameter) all the way down the compression post and onto the CB. But I guess the compression post is only about 12-18 inches back from the hinge so I guess that position does not put much leverage on the board. First I tried pushing it by hand, then I pounded it with a rubber mallet...still no movement. And I'm pretty sure the tube was on the board cause it slipped off a couple times and seemed to go between the board and trunk. I'm starting to worry if I broke the pin/hinge assembly or something like that.

I'm waiting for a nowind morning to drive it up to a boat ramp where I'll pull it out on the trailer mast up. But there are power lines right at the exit of the ramp so if its not just a simple matter of unclogging the trunk, I'll drop the mast. I really wanted to keep it in the water for the rest of the good sailing season (through the end of May). See, down here in Florida, once the rainy season starts in June and there are thunderstorms every other afternoon, we have 3-4 months of "low" season contrary to the northerners.

You might see if there is a diver in your area that can dive under the boat and free the board. Might not be as cheap as dropping the mast and trailering the boat out, but it would probably be faster.

--Mark

I would think you could even free it with a few snorkling dives and a good dive knife. At the very least you could get a good look at the situation to know what you are up against.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Where I have the boat docked, the water is brackish estuary water that doesn't have very good visibility (not visually apealling for swimming either)...and in hindsight, I probably would have cut myself pretty well on all the small barnicles growing right near the CB where the paint has worn off.

Yesterday, I ended up pulling the boat out at the boat ramp with the mast still up and rigged. Sure enough, there was a good sized rock (actually, more like a tubular shaped piece of old concrete covered with mini barnacles and other coral type stuff) wedging the CB hard to one side (had to knock it with a screwdriver a couple times before it came loose). The rock was kind of tubular shaped, probably about 1 inch by 2 inches and it was the long side that was wedged inbetween the board and trunk. No wonder I couldn't get the thing down no matter what I tried. Lesson learned....I won't be letting my boat beach broadside like that again. That rock had jammed itself in about half way up the height of the board so there must have been a bunch of sand that pushed it up in there and then fell out.

I noticed that a fairly large part of the board is down about an inch or so below the hull even when its fully up. A perfect little scoop to push crap up if you are pushing sideways. Also, since the rock was wedged on the starboard side and we were beached to port, it must have wedged when my wife and I pushed the boat sideways off the beach.

The centerboard should fully go into the slot with nothing sticking out.
You might want to pull the board and check 2 things:
1) is the pin not properly fitted up into the slot in the trunk?
2) is the pivot hole in the centerboard worn so that the board hangs low?

Originally there were a lot of posts about pivot hole wear on the centerboards because it was supposed to be solid fiberglass near the hole, but was only the hollow shell which wore quickly.