Gybing Centreboards

Originally posted by craiggo Mike, clearly you've made it work for you in the 5 'o', but I'm interested to know if there are either conditions, or boats where you don't think it works?

There is no question that in a dinghy, used and installed correctly they work.

Originally posted by Dougaldog All, This is nearly associated with 'that' other thread running elsewhere on the forum - but isn't quite. So...gybing centreboards. How far back to they go and when did they first come into practical use (as against just the theory behind their operation) D

The theory was expounded in 1928 by Manfred Curry.

Interesting topic. I sailed in a Goodwin  Hornet in the 70's which had a gybing board. Always wondered why, but lovely boat anyway

The thing it did for the sailboard was to point high without the normal effort you had to do on a board to outpoint the mean. (Body angle, rig over sheeted hard across the centerline and beyond) the problem came when in order to engage the 'knock' that turned it off, (a block at the top rear of the foil) you had to rake it aft, this then depowered the foil by obviously altering the profile it presented and the board wouldn't point that comfortably at all, so it became all or bugger all, it also could develop a nasty 'rattle' on a dead run or deep reach.

I didn't just bin it out of hand, at the time I was working with Parkers who were in those days the go to 5 oh supplier and we were shipping hundreds of these boards I'd designed, so it was worth working on and we had a couple of goes, Milanese foils, so not cheap and a potential break through like this would have been worth thousands, but sadly it wasn't to be, even heavier riders couldn't make it go above the top end of a three early four, it also co-incided with the other break through we'd built in which was the fully retracting CB which was helping sales anyway, so two things to cope with was felt to be one too many.