Re: Ballast

Reduce sail and utilize your human ballast as "rail meat" to help keep the boat on her feet. Adding ballast must be done judiciously...too much will make the boat "cranky" and reduce performance.

Dennis
Bellingham, WA

--- Inbolger@yahoogroups.com, "Peter" <pvanderwaart@...> wrote:
>
> > My question is how many kilos should be placed and where, in
> > the daggerboard or internal?
>
> First, you want to be sure that boat has adequate buoyancy when capsized or flooded. It's a bad trade-off if you make tipping more dangerous in the process of making it more unlikely.
>
> A designer might have to know a lot more about the boat before answering the question, but I think an experimental approach is likely to be instructive. You can experiment with large rocks or bags of sand. I would start with about 50 lbs (say 25 Kilos) and work your way up. The ballast does not have to be fixed for experimenting, but you would want to fasten it securely in place once you made it a permanent installation.
>
> I had a centerboard boat about 5.8 meters long. It had 250 lbs (133.4 Kg) of internal ballast, and could handle a strong wind if well handled. That boat was wider at the rail than at the waterline. This is a good feature for reducing the chance of capsize.
>
> Peter
>

> My question is how many kilos should be placed and where, in
> the daggerboard or internal?

First, you want to be sure that boat has adequate buoyancy when capsized or flooded. It's a bad trade-off if you make tipping more dangerous in the process of making it more unlikely.

A designer might have to know a lot more about the boat before answering the question, but I think an experimental approach is likely to be instructive. You can experiment with large rocks or bags of sand. I would start with about 50 lbs (say 25 Kilos) and work your way up. The ballast does not have to be fixed for experimenting, but you would want to fasten it securely in place once you made it a permanent installation.

I had a centerboard boat about 5.8 meters long. It had 250 lbs (133.4 Kg) of internal ballast, and could handle a strong wind if well handled. That boat was wider at the rail than at the waterline. This is a good feature for reducing the chance of capsize.

Peter

Dear Friends
I have a Dinghy with the following characteristics
L.O: 3.80 Mts.
Beam: 1.60 Mts
Draft: 0.125 Mts
Draft daggerboard: 0.78 Mts
Volume displacement 0.25 cubic Mts
Sail area 9 square meters

We sailed in Patagonia, an area of strong winds, and
as the family is afraid to dunk I thought
ballast.
My question is how many kilos should be placed and where, in
the daggerboard or internal?

Thank you very much
Alberto

If you have glassed the tanks, why not fill them with concrete? Same weight as sand, but has some structural integrity to it, so it might not try to sarp your hull in the winter. Just a thought - no experience to back it up. Jim