Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A movable keel in a sailboat that can be pivoted upward to reduce the boat's draft in shallow water.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A shifting keel passing through a slot in a boat's bottom and swinging on a pin at the forward lower corner. It is capable of being hoisted or lowered in a vertical casing or well. When lowered below the boat's bottom, it acts as a projecting keel; and when triced up by a tackle at the after end, it is completely housed within the boat, reducing her draft to that of the keel proper. In England often called
drop-keel . The center-board is a characteristic feature of the racing-craft of the United States, constituting a peculiar type in yachts and cat-boats.
Wiktionary
- n. alternative spelling of centreboard.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Naut.) A retractable or sliding keel used on sailboats, formed of a broad board or slab of wood or metal which may be raised into a water-tight case amidships, when in shallow water, or may be lowered to increase the area of lateral resistance and prevent drifting to leeward when the vessel is beating to windward. It is used in vessels of all sizes along the coast of the United States.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a retractable fin keel used on sailboats to prevent drifting to leeward
Examples
“A centerboard is a wooden or metal fin housed in a centerboard trunk.”
“Of all things mechanical, he loved sailboats the most, planing into the wind with a sheet of canvas, a centerboard and a tiller, which he picked up from perusing the Horatio Hornblower novels.”
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“By saving money, by earning more, and by each of us foregoing a bicycle on his birthday, we had collected the purchase price of the Mist, a beamy twenty-eight-footer, sloop-rigged, with baby topsail and centerboard.”
“A centerboard-case divided the room in half longitudinally, and to this was attached the hinged table from which they ate.”
“There was a table in the center which was split by a centerboard slot.”
“A curtain, easily attached by hooks between the centerboard-case and the roof, at night screened Mrs. Hastings 'sleeping quarters.”
“The boat was a Raven, it was an open, centerboard boat and all my sailing, with the exception of a few races in a Laser, were all on large, ocean type, keel boats.”
“You wouldn't have seen that sailboat on there three years ago before the renovations, because the weeds would have been grabbing its centerboard and it probably would have been in constant danger of running aground!”
“He dropped the centerboard and un-lashed the mast from the side of the boat.”
“Buttersworth's oil painting depicts the 93-foot centerboard schooner, Atalanta, racing in the New York Yacht Club's Autumn Regatta of 1875.”
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