BYYB Forums

I'm thinking of putting 2 of these 150 lb bags in my Weekender to settle it down in rougher conditions. They fill and drain quickly so I can be ballast free in light airs.
They are 25" X 14" X 14". One would go in the peak and the other would go aft the mast box.
If the boat goes over, at least it doesn't sink. Any thoughts?

300 pounds of ballast in a Weekender? Well this is way more than you should consider and frankly eats up huge amounts of internal volume too. Not to mention, it's not going to help the stability curve at all, in fact might just decrease it. For ballast to be effective it needs to be below the CG and for it to be truly effective, it needs to be a considerable distance below the CG. Even if you put 300 pounds of lead plates on the bottom a Weekender's keel, it wouldn't be far enough away from the CG to be particularly effective, in terms of significant improvement on stability.

Water takes up a lot of room, for very little weight, compaired to other materials, like steel or lead. Hell, even reinforced concrete is a 3 times as dense as water, meaning you need 2/3's less volume for the same weight. To "settle" down a Weekender, you only need a car battery (35 - 50 pounds) at the mast box. If you're a well fed skipper double this, but you don't need much more than this. Again, the stability of the boat isn't going to improve, but the ride might a little, in a chop. Then again, if you shift your weight forward in the cockpit, when the boat starts to pound in a chop, it'll do the same thing, though to move very far, you'll need an arm or tiller extension, depending on which is easier.

Why do you want ballast and why 300 pounds?

The bags come in 150 lb each. My plan is to start with one in the forepeak and then see how much I want to fill the second bag aft the mast.
I used to use to batteries in the forepeak but they made launching and dragging the boat in shallow parts of the rivers I frequent difficult. So I've used nothing for the past 2 years and the boat pounds and heals very fast in gusts. I just want to slow the reactions of the boat down in gusty conditions and reduce pounding.
Room is not an issue. The bags fill or unfill in minutes with the pump. And my preferance in most instances is to use no extra weight.
So I trust your advice,Paul.
If you think it's a bad idea I'll save $120 for the bags and $119 for the pump.
I don't need batteries. I use a 10 lb one to power my bilge pump.

Trimming the boat down at the bow, will reduce pounding to a degree, though it's a flat bottom boat and isn't going to behave like a round bilge or V bottom. Some weight might make you feel better, particularly in a chop, but the boat's vertical and lateral accelerations are quick, because she's small and light. Again, some weight will help a little, but not a lot. The best place for this weight is as low as possible on the keel. 100 pounds of lead could be cast or glued (birdshot for example) to make a shoe on the keel bottom. You can go to the local gun store and buy 25 or 50 pound bags of shot. I did this recently with a centerboard weight. I was going to cast it, but then decided to just mix the birdshot with straight epoxy and pour this into the hole in the centerboard. Worked fine and the next day it was ready to receive for fairing compound and paint.

When I was able to move from hugging the stern to hugging the cabin bulkhead I noticed an increase overall in speed and reduction in pounding.  If you like your wheel, and I did, I think that a bit of weight  in the bow isn't the worst thing.  There have been days when I wished for crew, not so much for the company, but for boat trim.  I don't think the water bags are the worst idea in that regard, but I just can't get past my aversion to having any water inside my boat that I don't intend to drink.  If I were to try something like that I would use canvas bags filled with sand.  They would be easier to wrestle through the hatches and would conform to the shape of the boat.  Way cheaper too. 

Al

Sand doesn't weigh much more than water, so it too takes up a lot of room in a boat. A gallon bucket full of sand is 12 - 13 pounds. That's a lot of gallon buckets to make 100 pounds of ballast, though sand is cheap enough. To offer some reference a cubic foot of sand weighs 120 - 130 pounds, while a cubic foot of lead is about 700 pounds. To put it another way, if you have a 12" square of lead about 3/4" of an inch thick, you have a 100 pound hunk of ballast. Cut this in half and bolt it on either side of the keel for best effect.

I was thinking I could also fill the bags with beer......................... just kidding.
I use a long tiller that puts me as far forward as the companion way, so my balance sailing solo is pretty good.
I'm just not happy with the boats quick response to heavy gusts from all directions which are common on the lake I sail.
Being a cheap miser, as well as worried that the bags will possibly leak after a season or two, and the pump will break,
I've decided to go back to the way I did it 2 years ago - 2 batteries in the forepeak and I'll have the advantage of a minn kota
as a backup to my gas outboard.
Al, Could you please tell me how you modified your gaff jaws so that it doesn't get hung up in the shrouds?
I ran into that particular problem last fall in high winds and I don't want to go through that again.

I modified the jaws that the plan calls for by rounding off the tips of the horns and adding a plastic bumper to connect the two.  The bumper is made of quarter inch polyethylene that I had laying around the place and bent with a heat gun.  I suppose it could also be made of galvanized strap.  Since I made that change I haven't had a problem with the jaws hanging up on the shrouds at all.  They still touch the shrouds, but they don't get stuck.  It is important to feather the ends of the bumper into the body of the jaws so that the shrouds don't get caught when you tack. 

The pic is of both gaffs and shows the bumper as well as the shape of the jaws for both.  You will notice that my new gaff has a curve in the horns upward of about 20 degrees.  I made the new jaws shorter in order to save some weight and found that when I raised the mast they could get jammed if the halyards were not running freely.  If I didn't notice it in time, I would lever the bumper off.  That did not happen with the original gaff. 

Anyway, that is my answer to the gaff getting stuck in the shrouds.  Others added a spreader at the top of the mast to fix the problem. 

Al

Al, Thanks very much for the photo. That is really helpful.