gust hit, I just sheeted out a little to keep it from rounding up. Reefed, everything was much calmer aboard, but almost the  same speeds. You keep on your course with input from the centerboard, the sheet, and the helm. They all cooperate. On a  long tack, the centerboard and the sheet balance the boat, and the helm corrects for wave action. Anyway, the trick is that as the centerboard pivots up, it's swinging aft. Moving the anti-leeway effort from the  centerboard decreases weather helm as the centerboard pivots back. Weather helm is, of course, the result of the keel's  center of effort ahead of the sail's center of effort. With the centerboard all the way up, you get back some weather helm because the centerboard has disappeared. However,  running downwind and jibing you get your lightest helm with the centerboard fully retracted. Interestingly, it's hard to make 90 degree tacks without a little weather helm. If I've got it all balanced out, I drop the  centerboard a bit before coming about. Otherwise, as soon as the sail starts to fill on the new tack I have to fight lee helm -  the centerboard develops its lift from forward motion, but as soon as the wind hits the sail on the new tack you've got the  sail forces at play. That means you get lee helm until you accelerate on the new tack. At first, I thought I was just having to 'meet the boat' like on a battleship. After a few sails I figured out what was going  on. I need to practice heaving to, so I can learn how best to manage that. Offhand, I think beam to the wind, centerboard  almost all the way up, sheet free, and helm into the wind a bit is probably best. The cool thing about these boats is they don't sail like everybody else's boat. If you listen carefully, they will teach you  what works, and that's just great fun. Ok, I'll shut up about my centerboard now, but one last observation. When you first raise your sail and are pointed into  the wind making sternway, the boat is reluctant to fall off the wind. In that case, dropping the centerboard gives the boat  a better pivot, gives the rudder a nice long lever on the boat's center of mass, and I think moving the keel's center of effort  towards the pointy end of the boat when making sternway yields lee helm - and the boat, moving in reverse, falls off onto a  tack much better. Or, it's all just a fascinating hallucination. Either way, I'm entertained. hat damn boat is smarter than you in all BUT ONE aspect. If your board is all the way DOWN, if you will just LET  GO of both the tiller and the sheet, that STUPID-@$$ boat will head up directly into the wind IN LESS THAN A  BOAT LENGTH.  T   did have a remarkable demonstration of the original working platform that is a catboat. I volunteered on the wooden  replica working catboat Sarah this summer. Skip Hall, the captain, was describing the nineteenth century catboat use.  I  He said that you just let everything go (tiller and sheet), and you can walk all over the boat and fish and pull nets  without fear of being hit by the boom. When ready to go, you grab the tiller, pull in the sheet line and move to your next  spot. He then did just that. While a PC is a lot lighter than Sarah the same applies. I was taught that is known as  'lying a-hull'  and it is amazing  how stable Katty Bay if you just do as Skip suggests.  25 Posted By: Roger Shoemaker, Picnic Cat Posted By: George Boley, ex-Sun Cat  Sun Cat 