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Adding ballast, early on


Jan Williamson

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There are no plans, only Ray's photos and description of the bulbs he cast himself.

If you use the search function you will find a lot of various threads that relate to his experience. He is the only one that has done so at this time to the best of my knowledge. Others have considered it and after finding out how much it costs to have them cast by a foundry, they tend to forget about it. He cast his from lead wheel weights in molds he made himself.

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Thank you Ray :)

Lots of great information. I need all the help I can get to be able to sail without capsizing :oops:

I will definately experiment with weights on the cabin floor first. I even thought of making a plywood surrounded lead floor insert that has a velcro attached vinyl cushion on top. I would lose about 2 or 3 inches of cabin head space though. Are your lead bulbs you made permanently attached to the keel? And are they flush with the line of the keel? Or?

My brother is a foundry pattern and mold maker, so I know I could get any shape I wanted. I do plan on using epoxy on the exterior and keel anyway, along with tape. I was just going to skip the cloth on the keel bottom.

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Jan,

Obviously the lower the weight the better the righting tendency. Now then, everything is a compromise when ballasting a shallow draft hull design. You don't want the weight to be too far below the bottom or it becomes a keel in itself. Most of the builders that have had their Weekenders in the water for some time have found that about 100 to 150 lbs. added to the forepeak in the form of batteries is about all the additional ballast that is needed. It keeps the bow down so the flat bottom doesn't pound against the waves and increases the working ability of the chine/keel relationship. It also tends to level the boat when loaded with moveable ballast (crew).

I think it is important to realize that Ray's primary stated motivation for adding this much ballast low on his keel was to make the Weekender feel like a larger/wider weighted keel boat. So when at rest and with him and his crew moving about on the boat, it wouldn't be quite so tippy. In adding the bulbs where he did on the keel, he accomplished that without sacrificing much in the way of handling or speed.

For the boat to be self righting and not have any danger of going turtle on someone, it would take more ballast on a lower keel to offset the moment of the sails and the lack of a deeper keel/centerboard.

It isn't needed for the boat to perform well or safely, even with a novice crew onboard.

I too would recommend that you build the Weekender per the plans, learn to handle it in various wind/wave conditions and get some good experience in it. Then begin experimenting with sandbags inside the cabin in various conditions to see if the ballast accomplishes what it is you are desiring. Give it a good fair workout before deciding to add the ballast, if that is what you ultimately decide to do. Then go to your brother and have him cast a couple nice hydrodynamically designed bulbs that can be bolted to your keel.

There is no doubt that Ray is happy with his decision to do this. I applaud his efforts and his documentation of his efforts. He has found a solution that has accomplished making a dory type hull feel more like a wider Potter hull at rest. And he hasn't substantially degraded the performance of the Weekender by doing so. But I don't see a rush of other existing Weekender owners to do the same thing. I have seen a number of them place their batteries in the forepeak though to bring the bow down. Or add weight inside the forepeak to bring the bow down to improve handling.

But there again, it is your choice and your decision to make. No one will tell you that you are wrong in deciding to go with ballast. I just think you need all the information that you can get to make a good informed decision when there is only one documented example to go by.

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Jan

I have added 250lbs ballast to my weekender. I have lead that came from a boat that was given to me but was to bad to repair. The lead is in 1lb inguts and I laied them out in 2 layers in the forpeak totaling 155lbs and added another 100lbs in the laserette. I found that just the weight forward it was off balance. I went out to sail it with the weight in the front and found it didn't act right the bow was down to far and cut through the waves and had a couple break over the bow. I added the weight in the rear and it was much better. The boat was much more stable and not tippy like it was before ballast. I am going too try putting the the weight down the center of the cabin and see how I like that. The weekender is a stable boat without ballast and is a good boat to learn to sail on. I had never sailed until I launched my boat. I would recomend that you try it without ballast before you add any.

Right now my boat is on its side getting some repairs that fix some things that I screwed up when I was building her.

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Well it does sound like I can move forward with the building process, because I plan on the taping and filleting the keel anyway. If I do go with the ballast, I'm thinking keel, because I don't want to permanantly give up cabin space. After reading some of the capsizing stories though I have also decided not to take any one out with me that can't bail :) My use will be strickly lakes, small warm water ones at first. So I wonder if ballasting the boat will make it easier to right in a capsize. I plan on floatation foam in all possible areas.

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Hello everyone

This is my first post here as I have only just discovered this most interesting forum. I see many members of the BYYB here and lots of good subjects.

The ballast subject is fasinating. Recently on our week long Weekender cruise we had quite a bit of gear and food and the result was a sure footed feeling on deck. The total load, acording to the bathroom scale, including crew and supplies, anchors etc, was 780lbs.

With the exception of the anchor and small outboard, everything would float in the event of the unthinkable. If you are going to put 250lbs of lead on board how much floatation are you going to need to keep her from sinking?. Several cubic feet of foam takes up a lot of room in the already small cabin and if you went on a cruise as we did the combined extra weight might reduce the freeboard to uncomfortable levels.

At the moment I am concerned with our own boat as we have very heavy canvas sails that will soak up water like a sponge and weigh a ton when they are wet. I feel we should dump just to see if it's possible to right her with two of us standing on the keel.

I would like to see some sort of emergency self inflating bladder that would fill the cabin at the flick of a switch. Hoping no one is inside of course...

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Phoebus currently has a rub strip of steel running stem to stern to protect the keel. The area we sail is all rock and this helps protect that soft wood. If I were to add ballast it would be in the form of a long tapered cast lead bar along the bottom steel. We use a dinghy to go ashore mostly and a few extra inches draft will only be a concern on our trailer.

Interestingly, when we dumped our 20" Trawl dory (just a test) the bow and stern were actually just above the water as she lay on her beam ends.

In this case, floatation added to the gunwhales amidships helped pull her upright but also made it tougher when she turned turtle. I ended up cutting hand holes in the bottom of the hull to help with rolling the boat. Naturally the centerboard retracts in this upsidedown position and so there isn't much to grab!

We used large inflatable dock fenders for floatation in the test and attached them at different locations.

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Ray;

Your calculations are amazing. The freeboard was reduced by just that 3". We already have sealed air tight seats running all the way back to the transom, with O ring hatches.

Your idea of sealing the forward compartment is good except that's where we put our feet now that we sleep with our heads toward the stern. I think a layer of 3" blue foam under the fore deck would'nt reduce storage significantly and perhaps a piramid shaped block pushed right up in the bow would work as well.

I wish I had done this before the sides went on...

I have been collecting old lead water pipe in preperation for casting a lump to play around with. Perhaps a mould made with 2" C channel would work.

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Brian, I had origanally thought of putting a triangle shaped hunk of blue foam in the forpeak in front of the bits, but run into problems finding the blue foam here in South Florida. What I intend to do is use a 12" mooring bouy that Dad happend to have stored away. I'll put it into place and inflate once I have it in position. The other possibility is to use a floatation bag sold for racing dingy's. I also stuffed 4 pool noodles behind each seat back in the cockpit and plan to mount more to the lazzarette floor and in the forepeak area.

Bob

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Ray, I saw those casting photos, nice job. We have done some lead casts here in the shop, mostly for model sailboat ballast bulbs. They are always small and we used plaster as a mould. Our cast iron melting pot is too small for such a large amount of lead. I suppose I could weld up crude steel box with a spout.

Robert, I have seen those soft rubber mooring bouys and they look like just the right size to squeeze in there. You could put a rope through a ringbolt up in the corner and a attach it to the bouy and you could pull it right up tight!

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Any parents or grandparents looking for cheap but strong flotation bags: how about the inflatable bouncy balls with a handle on top that kids (at least ours did) bounce around on. Just steal one from a handy child. Or if your conscience troubles you, look for them on sale. I have bought a number over the years and they would work well for the use Bob Cox is discussing, complete with handle for tieing down. 8)

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The Weekender, I've found to be very stable. I can easily stand anywhere and not be scared of her tiping at all, and I'm not short or small. I've often stood at the aft corners of the deck with very little change in tilt. And my Weekender has never been loaded heavily yet, mostly life jackets.

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