Centerboard jams on 23'

[Al Kraft]

We have been having trouble with the centerboard jamming on our 23. There is a shackle that seems to get jammed, along with mud up next to the board. Wellfleet is very shoal, and the boat is in the mud at low tide. Anyone have any thoughts/solutions to these related problems?

 

[Don Evans]

Replace Shackle

If you are out of the water and can get to the shackle on the CB (means raising the boat up somehow and lowering the board) I would lose the shackle and go with a spliced line. If you are in the water mainly though, get someone to dive under the boat (SCUBA), drop the board and replace the shackle with a narrower deeper throat shackle. As far as the mud, can't help you there.Don

 

[Mike]

a popular topic

A jammed centerboard on my Oday 23 was what prompted my first posting to this site about four years ago. Try looking through the archives of this site for other suggestions. I fear the only way you are going to find out for sure what is causing the problem is by hauling the boat and looking up into the slot. It could be the shackle, it could be a barnacle, or it could be that your centerboard has absorbed water over the years and is now too big for the slot. I "solved" my sticking centerboard problem one winter by figuring out how high I could raise it without sticking, and then marking the pennant line with indelible marker so that I would never raise it beyond that point. For emergencies, I keep a four foot steel rod handy. I made a "head" for the rod out of wadded up duct tape, and I CAREFULLY insert the rod in the pennant line hole and push on the stuck board to free it up. I have only had to use this method twice, but not since I read horror stories on this site about others who have used this method. Apparently, the pennant line feeds through flexible plastic hose underwater, and at least one person reported here that they punctured this hose in attempting to use a rod to free their board. I don't know if all Oday's have this hose (I seem to remember that the poster who told this story was refering to an Oday 25, not a 23), but it is enough to give one pause. Good luck.