Hi all,
New member to the forum. This past Fall I bought a 1981 DSII that DS Forum username: elcapitan did a great job restoring back in 2020 (he posted about it here at the time). Now I'm picking up where he left off, and one of my next planned upgrades is the centerboard pennant.
At the moment, it's really tough to get up the last 10% or so of the way. Previous owner had a tough time with it, too, but it wasn't too much of a problem for him because he had it in a roll-off dock. I'm trailering the boat, though, so I like to make sure it's 100% up before it gets anywhere near the trailer. My current kluge-y fix is to haul it up the last 10% of the way with a ratchet strap (see pic) which works great. But it would be even better to have it rigged up the right way and not need to keep a ratchet strap in the cuddy.
I read the threads on here about this problem, and pulled the great images some of you posted about routing all the cables properly. This is what mine looks like now...
There are a couple mechanical advantage problems that I can see here. One is that the uphaul cable takes a turn around the block by the mast step, rather than terminating a few inches in front of the trunk and switching to braid. The other is that, in this configuration, there's no cascade, and the subsequent heft that provides. As you can see, one eyestrap remains on the deck from the original configuration, and the screw holes from the other are visible on the starboard side.
Have any of you ever tackled (pun more or less intended) this before? The centerboard seems to be physically fine - it was restored two seasons ago, and it happily clunks into place once enough force is applied to it (with that ratchet strap). I just don't think this current setup provides enough force to hoist it up those last few inches. What do you think?