Evening folks, question on how much ballast to put in the bow compartments of Jacob my center cockpit 27. I have just done 2 weeks trouble free cruising down to Bardney via the tent from Keadby to Torksey etc. The boat is easy to steer and keep a straight line but a couple of folk have commented it is too bows heavy whilst on the move. Have i overdone the ballast, and will it effect my fuel consumption etc. BTW i have sandbags and leisure batteries up front. Cheers in advance Philihun.
At displacement speeds we heavy is steady, all you have to worry about is inertia - getting it going or stopping it. So why not shift some of the weight aft to trim the boat?
Plastic outboard boats are notoriously light and the wind or current has them as a plaything - ballast prevents a lot of that and improves steering control. It also increases response-time to the helm of course but you can allow for that whereas allowing for gusts of wind you cannot allow for.
Move some ballast or add more at the stern to trim the boat. One bag of stones (don't use sand because if a bag breaks it makes an awful mess) won't have much effect. You'd be amazed at how much ballast you can actually add to your bilges.
As a guide, a little IP16 hull (admitedly this needs ballast for stability) takes anything up to half a metric tonne. I used to concrete steel shot into those! As it's name suggests, and IP16 (Island Plastics) was 16 feet (4.877m)long and round bilge. 1/2 tonnne trimmed one down about 6 inches (15cm) so not in danger of sinking.
Normans are always "down-at-the-nose" visually, a design feature (error?) that makes them look as though they will nose-dive at any moment so visually they always look better if you can push the stern down so adding some ballast to both ends can improve how they "sit".
If you want to plane them of course you don't want too much weight aft but you can't do that on the Trent without men in big hats yelling at you!
ballast on a 27
Posted - 05 Sep 2016 : 19:02:39
