Robbin, Sorry to hear about your centerboard issues. They can be frustrating. On Dauntless, the centerboard cannot be lowered enough to expose the pendant attachment point. I had to hoist the boat, remove the pivot pin, remove the stop pin and then lower the entire board out of the slot to get access to the shackle. I don't know if its just our boat, or if all the 23's suffer this issue. With respect to the pendant. I use 7x19 stainless cable....off the top of my head I want to say it is 3/16" but not sure on that, ill have to check. Anyway, it is way stronger than needed and it has a thimble swedged on it. I do my own swedging, and I usually use two sleeves. I have not had a problem with the swedge letting go, although, I did break the pendant clean in half by absent mindedly winching it up beyond the max retraction point. That was my mistake and the mechanical advantage of the winch obliged me with a loud snap and a,boom when the centerboard bottomed out on the stop pin. Amazingly, nothing broke and D did not sink. LOL If you pulled a piece of cable with no sleeve or thimble on it out of the trunk...I find myself wondering if possibly you had a wire failure and the stub is still down there with the thimble, sleeve, etc. Have you been able to visualize if there may still be a piece of pendant attached to the board? Getting the leed of the wire as it feeds into the winch is critical to prevent overrides...AND...I never totally unload the pendant. If you do the wire remaining on the spool will try to straighten out off the spool and make a mess out if all your nice neat parrallel wraps. I have had that happen and it causes me to totally unload the spool, and the re-wrap all the wraps neatly. Nowadays, I always lower the board just till I feel the board contact the stop pin , then winch back up just enough to snug up the cable. My winch is in the starboard lazzerette. I have seen others like Bones' that sit directly atop the trunk. Which do you have? I have entertained the idea of replacing the wire rope with one of the new synthetics like Dyneema, Amsteel, or some type of kevlar, but I won't do it until sometime when I have to remove the centerboard again....and I plan on that being a long long time from now! At least I hope. I love the M23's design....however, if they are all designed like mine where you have to drop the board or else do a major modification to the trunk to gain access to the pendant attachment point.....well...that aspect leaves a little to be desired. Let us know how it works out! Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!