I would make all the preparation for such a raising system when building the hulls. Then as you say it can easily be added later.

I race most doublehanded and I find that I nearly always keep my boards down. It seems that with the Taipan boards you can get away with that; all the way up to where the winds gets really honking. I for now am making the trade-off that leaving them down speeds up our transitions and keeps the decks clear while the negative effects are pretty minor. Not to mention that hitting a board with your elbow or something is a real pain. I think the negative effect is that the boat is a little bit more nervous on the downwind but that doesn't seem to bother us much (my crew and I). We compensate for it with other skills.

I do solo sailing quite often recreationally and here the system would be a nice to have, but the final eyes haven't made it too my boat yet even though I have them laying around. Probably next year.

Wouter