ssailing - how to do!

Arial
Talk to me!   I have been crew on several dinghys and find that there are various opinions on how to manage the centre board on various manouvres. The one that befuddles me most is that with one book it advises to have the board almost up when carrying out gybing and another says to be sure its fully down! Is there a hard and fast rule for this?

It really depends what you're sailing. With the assymetric boats, like the 200 and the 400, I've always been told to "Leave it where it is for the whole race", meaning fully down.

With a little dinghy like the Topper, lifting the board makes a big difference downwind; however, in anything more than a good F5 (with waves) I've chickened out of lifting it too high, because the boat starts rocking so much you hang on for dear life! 
I've deliberately tried to gybe with the the daggerboard fully down, at a decent speed and I've never been "tripped". It might slow down the manœuvre, I am not good enough to notice that sort of things.

With the Contender, the centreboard never comes fully up, even on a dead run. On most boats, there's a cleat and a downhaul, allowing you to bring the centreboard half-way up at the most. It means 2 things:
1 - if you forget to pull the blue rope (it's a blue rope in my boat ) to lower the board on the beat, you're in for a swim as soon as you hit the trapeze... I've learned my lesson.
2 - if you come back to the beach with the cleat still on, you're in for some damage... I'm slowly learning that one.

 

I'm sure all the proper sailors on this forum will give you many more, well-researched answers. They love doing that, you know!

Freddo, What are you sailing??

 

Terrific - thanks for all the replies.It obviously matters where one is sailing, the wind force, and what the craft is.     I have two dinghies - Topper and Mirror, with the Mirror being the most stable of course! Still experimenting with these gybes though and it seems to me that the tide direction too does contribute.   Getting there - thanks for all the help.

Originally posted by HannahJ In a Mirror, definitely definitely leave it down during the gybe: if you don't your crew will get stuck to leeward behind it and you're almost certain to capsize...

sounds like you are speaking from experience