20170114

Daggerboard or Centreboard

Cruising dinghies often have centreboards instead of daggerboards for better safety. There are several Mirror dinghies whose daggerboards were replaced with centreboards for dinghy cruising. The downside of a centreboard is that it gets full of sand and mud when you are beaching. Another nuisance is the centreboard pin, which may bend or cause a leak.

Daggerboards have a bad reputation: when the daggerboard hits the ground, it can rip out the daggerboard case. And you can hardly sail with the daggerboard halfway up.

I thought about using leeboards since they are outside the boat without impact on the accommodation. Or the risk of a leak or damaged pin. However, they are butt-ugly and fragile in port. And you cannot stand on them to right your capsized boat.

I have sailed lightweight racing dinghies with daggerboards all my life. Many times I ran aground (admittedly not on rocky shores). Capsized hundreds of times. Never had any damage to the daggerboard case. The benefits of a daggerboard are:

• better performance, no water sloshing about in the casing.
• not half as intrusive in your cockpit
• no moving parts (apart from the board itself)
• easier to stand on when you are capsized

In the end I decided to use a daggerboard. Will add high-density foam at the back of the daggerboard case to reduce impact on grounding.

More info: http://www.pdracer.com/keel/