It seems as though I was on the right path. Setting up SVN correctly allowed me to connect using "deploy:cold" and again when I issued "cap deploy"
I added this to my subversion\config file
C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Subversion\config
ssh=plink -i pathToPrivateKey\PrivateKey.ppk -l username -pw password
2008-02-26 12:21 AM
I am a user.