Tom, I agree with Randy. At least from my own experiences with Dauntless, I did not get very good results trying to beat the board down from the top. I actuall got the best results from using trailer winch sucked up to the bottom of the keel slot just behind the centerboard well pulling down on the pendat, but I'm not sure if you could pull the pendant down through on a 15 or not. Also, if you suck the pendant up between the board and the trunk you'll just make things tighter. It's a frustrating deal for sure. As you probably already know from Dauntless' web page, I eventually had to drill holes in the swing keel and install perpendicular pins in it that I could strike. It wasn't pretty or fun. Hopefully you won't have to do something so drastic.
I would have to think your windward performance will suffer greatly without being able to get the board down. I know that we did some exerimenting on Jasons 17 in about 20 knots sailing with the board up vs down using a GPS to show us the boats actual track vs the boats heading while beating. We found out that the board only seemed to make a slight difference in the amount of heel of the boat but made a very significant difference in the amount of leeway the boat was making. We were able to judge that by the relative difference between the track and heading sailing in each configuration. Just food for thought. Good luck and stick with it!!! Sean _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
