Ballast

[Callum4878]

Hi,

still new to all this boating stuff, having purchased my first boat about six weeks back, so bear with me on this question please.

I am currently moving from house to boat (need to be completely moved by August 11th), and I don’t travel, especially tools wise, which have mostly found a home in my boat mans cabin. Should I be removing some ballast to compensate for the substantial increase in weight, as surely I’m increasing draught, which is stated at 30”.

Thanks Keith.

 

[Murflynn]

stop worrying about it. 

when you have settled in, if you have loaded a tonne of kit on board you may find you need to adjust or remove some ballast, but it is not worth worrying about yet.

 

 

 

[system 4-50]

7 minutes ago, Murflynn said:

stop worrying about it. 

when you have settled in, if you have loaded a tonne of kit on board you may find you need to adjust or remove some ballast, but it is not worth worrying about yet.

 

 

 

If the ballast you need to move is now under the kit that could be a pain.  Is the old formula of 1 ton gives 1" change of depth still roughly true?

[Chewbacka]

13 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

If the ballast you need to move is now under the kit that could be a pain.  Is the old formula of 1 ton gives 1" change of depth still roughly true?

Depends on the size of the boat.

 

A quick sum is that for a 56ft narrowboat it is more like 35mm per tonne.  So pretty close.

 

That assumes it is uniformly spread out.  If you put all the extra weight at the very end it would be ‘locally’ a lot more as the boat would also pivot pushing the heavy end down more and the light end rising up a bit. 
 

But when you say a lot of stuff I doubt you mean a tonne or more, so probably doesn’t matter.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Chewbacka

[Col_T]

Given that its 25.4 mm to the inch, 35mm to the tonne isn't that close!

[Tracy D'arth]

9 minutes ago, Col_T said:

Given that its 25.4 mm to the inch, 35mm to the tonne isn't that close!

And it gets really critical with a short boat!

Over plating anything under 46 feet needs careful consideration

[Machpoint005]

I would have thought the amount of ballasting the OP is talking about is more likey to affect the trim than the overall draught.  It shouldn't be too much of a problem to shift kit around as necessary.