Hi Lee,
I've never removed my center board but it looks simple enough. What I have done is a significant amount of sailing in a C/B boat. My wife and I raced C/B dinghies for many years and I think we have a pretty good awareness of the effects of the C/B on boat performance because of that. Sooo I am going to respectfully disagree with Tom on the performance aspect of the C/B even if his boat does look better than mine.
In my experience without the board there is a noticable decrease in pointing ability and an increase in leeway especially as the wind builds. On our dinghies we used to tune the C/B to be gybing. That is the board was shimmed to cause it to angle towards windward at the forward edge to actually help the boat sail up into the wind reducing leeway as much as possible. The rules specified a maximum abount of C/B gybe but I suspect you could reach a point of diminishing return and create too much drag. I have often wondered if this could be done on the T-37 but for me the repeated haulouts to adjust the board would be cost prohibitive. The point of all this is that the board is there for a purpose in my opinion, and that is primarily to help the weatherly performance of the boat. In addition I find it impossible to back straight under power with the board up using a three blade Maxprop. Another advantage is that when you can't quite inch past that Catalina down wind you can raise the board and pick up about a 1/4 knot in speed. We call it Turbo Boost.
I have one data point on the pendant. I use New England Ropes Stayset. I replaced it after 6 years and it looked like new so I don't really think that is much of an issue considering the things on a boat that don't last for that long.
In any case I wouldn't let the centerboard be a show stopper. They are great boats and a joy to sail.
-Jim