Installing a new daggerboard - saga - Flingtime

Another mini saga in the life of a cruising catamaran.
The Daggerboard saga....(see picture gallery below)

Full marks to our indefatigable navigatrix who took the pictures whilst swimming around with a broken leg!!
It was well bandaged but we all thought it was 'just' a serious sprain.
She twisted her ankle (with an audible 'snap') the previous day while stepping onto a pile of loose mooring line in the cockpit.

The story so far.... About 5 years ago we hit a mudbank which had formed on one side of the channel near Runaway Bay (Gold Coast).
We were broad reaching at about 6 knots on almost the same track as the previous day so we must have just missed it then. The result was a severely damaged daggerboard which could not be raised, and it was too shallow to lower it. We were hard aground until we could winch ourselves off with a kedge at about 03:00 the next morning. A nearby major building site had been eroding mud into the channel over a period of time and a tongue of mud had extended into the channel.
The daggerboard was repaired by a shipwright who had experience with surfboard manufacture, and he rebuilt it from the remaining skins.
Great care was taken to retain the sacrifical aspect of construction as a cracked daggerboard case is not fun.
After the long cruise up the coast, the board must have been weakened as it simply gave up the ghost from the strain of sailing in some brisk conditions (25 knots close hauled) on a side trip from Cairns to the reef.

After collecting some outrageous repair quotations, I contacted Jeff McDavitt, the boat's builder and he gave me a fair price for a whole new board of a an updated design.
I asked him to anti-foul the tip of the board.
After several weeks, the board arrived in Cairns.  After fitting a lifting line, we tried dropping it in from above but the anti-foul was enough to jam it in the case, despite lots of lubricant. This abortive exercise took a whole afternoon as the starboard stay interferes with the board on its way into the case, and the stay had to be disconnected after securing the mast.
The only remaining alternative was to load it from below and hope that the size was correct and that it was only the anti-fouling thickness which jammed it at the top of the case.

The chosen installation location was on a mooring buoy in 8 metres of clear water.
Despite its significant weight, it took a lot more effort to sink than anticipated.

First off, a strong girth line was tied on a short distance below halfway down the board and a long line extended the liftling line up through the daggerboard case. The board was then dropped overboard. After attaching the main anchor and about 6 metres of 10mm anchor chain from the second anchor to the girth, the board was still much too buoyant to push into position.
After some head scratching the skipper decided to dangle the steel bucket (which doubled as emergency toilet etc.) and feed in main anchor chain as we carry 60 metres of it.
This  was quite a long process done hand over hand but finally the board was weighed down and could be manoeuvered into place for lifting up inside its case. A slight current made the task that much more challenging.

The skipper was trying not to think about the possibility of a board size problem and how to get it back out again. He gave it a 50/50 chance but the board was such a snug fit the anti-fouling thickness had made all the difference.

The very next day the new daggerboard was working well as we sailed a long upwind leg with the new screacher properly rigged for the first time.