How to Keep Daggerboard Down?

Friendly Dragon

Friendly Dragon

Member
Several begginer classes, a full year of El Toro junior yacht club program and finally the maiden voyage of a brand new Laser into the program. We can't keep the daggerboard down. We've adjusted the so called rubber stop in increments untill it was obviously over extended after first stretching the stock shock cord to it's limit. We achieved some improvement with these two maxed out adjustments but the board still floats up a foot or so. We've had to jamb control line in the slot to keep it down.:confused: Hoping for some solution.
 
I'm a beginner as well. So far I have found that if I make the bungee TOO tight it pulls the centerboard up. Try loosening and see if that helps.
 
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of sailing.
Two score years ago, a great Canadian, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Laser foil design. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of daggerboards who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But forty years later, the daggerboard still is not free. Forty years later, the life of the daggerboard is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. Forty years later, the daggerboard lives on a lonely vertical slot in the midst of a vast ocean of keels and centerboards. Forty years later, the daggerboard is still languishing in the corners of sailing society and finds himself an exile in his own waters. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our Laserforum to cash a check. When the architects of ISAF wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and Racing Rules of Sailing, they were signing a promissory note to which every foil was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all foils, yes, daggerboards as well as keels and centerboards, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of sailing, lift, and the pursuit of victory.
It is obvious today that ISAF has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as daggerboards are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, ISAF has given the Daggerboard a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of ISAF. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind ISAF of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of foils justice. Now is the time to lift ISAF from the quick sands of foils injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's sailboat foils.
It would be fatal for the ISAF to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the daggerboard's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Two Thousand six is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the daggerboard needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the ISAF returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in the world of sailing until the daggerboard is invited to keelboat and centerboard regattas. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of sailing until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to daggerboards who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the daggerboard community must not lead us to distrust of all centerboards and keels, for many of our fellow foils, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot sail alone.
As we sail, we must make the pledge that we shall float ahead. We cannot gybe back. There are those who are asking the devotees of daggerboard rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the daggerboard is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of sailing judge brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our blades, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the dry storage of the lakes and the marinas of the oceans. We can never be satisfied as long as a daggerboard in a centerboard regatta cannot sail and a daggerboard in a keelboat regatta believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow centerboard trunks. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of marina manager brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to England, go back to Alabama, go back to New Zealand, go back to South Africa, go back to Spain, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern oceans, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the sailors dream.
I have a dream that one day ISAF will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all underwater appendages are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the waves of the Atlantic the sons of daggerboards and the sons of centerboards and keels will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the Bay of San Francisco, a bay sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little daggerboards will one day live in a world where they will not be judged by the design of their housing but by the lift of their shape.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Mobile Bay, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Mobile Bay, little daggerboards will be able to provide lift with little centerboards and keels as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every trough shall be exalted, every crest shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of sailing shall be revealed, and all foils shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I go back to sailing. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the dangling foils of our world into a beautiful symphony of smooth sailing. With this faith we will be able to work together, to sail together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of the world's foils will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My racecourse, 'tis of thee, sweet bay of liberty, of thee I sing. Lake where my fathers died, bay of the pilgrim's pride, from every oceanside, let freedom ring."
And if the sailing world is great this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious wavecrests of The Cape of Good Hope. Let freedom ring from the mighty waves of North Sea. Let freedom ring from the heightening Waves of Puget Sound!
Let freedom ring from the Waves of Sydney Harbor!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of all waves!
But not only that; let freedom ring from tiny lakes in Europe!
Let freedom ring from rivers in Brazil!
Let freedom ring from every pond and slurry of the world. From every oceanside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every swamp and every pond, from every cove and straight, we will be able to speed up that day when all of the world's foils, daggerboards, keels, and centerboards, fiberglass and foam, lead and steel, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
 
I think guv got into the coffee again.


that said, the darned little black piece is your best bet to get the board locked down.
get the two sides of it mashed together (as others have pointed out in other threads).

also, you may try rotating the entire piece to one side, and move it forward on it's stops a little bit (does that make any sense at all?)

There is a magic sweet spot where it holds the board, and isn't terribly difficult to dislodge the board to get it up during the downwind.
 
God bless the board that rises through the trunk
They roll the rubber over it and think that it is sunk
The rubber gets tired of what it has to do
it dries and it buckles and the board floats through
and god bless the board

God bless the board that fights toward the sun
They roll tack over it and think that it is done
it moves through the trunk and reeaches for the air
and after a while it is showing everywhere
and god bless the board

God bless the board that drags on cement
its foam and it's tender and easily bent
but after a while it lifts up its head
for the sailor is living and the concrete it is dead
and god belss the board

Malvina Reynolds must be choking by now
 
gouvernail said:
God bless the board that rises through the trunk

Malvina Reynolds must be choking by now
Click to expand...

Oh, Fred, you've outdone yourself! Malvina would be proud.
 
Thanks for all the response. The rubber brake solution is now obvious. It's just that none of the other 12 or so boats had to do such an extensive deformation of the rubber, most none at all. Leads me to believe the board may be deficiant or a larger piece of brake rubber if the adjustment made proves not to hold very long.
And to those who are as sentimental to the gear must also be to the sport. I for one believe that sailing itself came first, as the chicken to the egg. The thought of sailing that is, came first, and that all the universes infinity was concieved with the hope that just one piece in it's ever evolving evolution would produce in time a place like earth that itself could possibly evolve into a place where something like us humans could appear and then realize what the place was good for. Well some of us anyway, and I for one believe earth, for as long as it's evolution maintains its elements as is, is the whole reason for being and the only reason for the universe. Why else for all the water with wind and the land to rest upon.
It won't last forever. And when the elements cease to be supportive of this only reason for the universe it will all disapear and the reason for all history, prehistoric and beyond can finally be considered successfull and that the meaning of life had it's contentment.
Sailing! Of course.
 
I've never had an issue with this... Do people attach a loop of shockcord through the bow eye, or a straight piece with a hook/clip on the end to the downhaul deck fairlead? I do the latter and it works fine.
 
The issues with the centerboard brake have not escaped the attention of the builders. At the World Council meeting in South Korea last month the PSE representative displayed a prototype of a new centerboard brake that they hope to introduce which, if it works as advertised, should finally solve this problem.

Unfortunately, I did not write down the details about how and when they hope to introduce it. In fact, I forgot about it until today when I was looking through my notes of the meeting for something else...

Anyway, I do remember holding it in my hands. Looks like it will do the job!

Tracy
 
SFBayLaser said:
The issues with the centerboard brake have not escaped the attention of the builders. At the World Council meeting in South Korea last month the PSE representative displayed a prototype of a new centerboard brake that they hope to introduce which, if it works as advertised, should finally solve this problem.

Unfortunately, I did not write down the details about how and when they hope to introduce it. In fact, I forgot about it until today when I was looking through my notes of the meeting for something else...

Anyway, I do remember holding it in my hands. Looks like it will do the job!

Tracy
Click to expand...

If this is not the prototype description of a senior moment....???
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top