Ballast question

[SV Papillon]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum. My wife and I are refitting a 50' apitong schooner. We have removed the steel fuel tanks and forward ballast due to exessive rust and cracking in the forward ballast. The tanks weighed 1000lbs dry and the concrete and rivets in the bow weighed about 2200 lbs. Any advise on how best to put ballast back on the boat?? We have been advised to either bolt lead to the cast iron keel or put lead pigs in the bilge. The bilge between the mast steps is covered with concrete which appears to be new with the boat and in good condition.

PS If anyone has any info on our boat's history it would be greatly appreciated!

What was reported to us:

Built in Vietnam in 1963 for US navel personel
somehow arrived in California in 1980's
Named "Goodwind" home ported out of Emerald Bay
may have done nonprofit work in San Diego
Was purchased and moved to Lake Union in Seattle in 1997 by Worth Brown at age 90
renamed "Island Trader" by Mr. brown
This is where we bought her.

Thanks
Jake

[TimothyB]

Was the ballast you removed interior or exterior? I am guessing it was interior, in which case the best thing to do is probably to put lead pigs in sealed boxes up where the back part of the old ballast was. Attach the boxes to the keel and frames absolutely, maybe with a few drifts and some lag bolts. You don't want that lead to form a battery with your fasteners or the rest of the scrap iron. 2200 lbs of lead is a bit over 3 cubic feet of lead so in a 50' vessel that should fit quite nicely, but you dont want to concentrate it too much in one place, hence the other reason for the boxes. If you really wanted to be salty, you could seal the pigs into the boxes with pitch.

Of course, 2200 lbs of lead pigs is pricey, so you could just put scrap iron and concrete back in there if you don't have the scratch for lead.

[SV Papillon]

The balast was interior all forward of the fore mast. When you say box what exatly do you mean? Make plywood boxs and put the pigs in them and fill them with pitch, fasten to the frames?
Jake

[Chan]

Concrete ballast?
Have you already paid for the boat?
Remove all the concrete, check the bilge after you remove the concrete, think about whether you still want to buy the boat.
Kick yourself in the ass for buying a boat built by the government in the Vietnam era, find someone with no clue and unload it!

[SV Papillon]

The ballast has been removed and the wood underneath is in fine shape. Since we are neither rich nor have trust funds in our future we don't have the luxury of excluding a boat for purchase due to dock side rumurs of a shady past. She was in our small budget. We are hoping someone out there knows the boat and can shed some light on her past. She passed survey with flying colors and we have yet to encounter any suprises, althought there will surely be some.

Jake

[Jay Greer]

Historicly, boats that I have delt with that were built of apitong, have had distinct problems with iron that came in contact with the wood.
In the case of placing balast you speak of against planking, I would reccomend building
inner sealing to keep the ballast pigs off of the planking and cribbing it to prevent shifting. This should be of no great expense to a creative owner builder.
JG

[donald branscom]

If the concrete was directly on the steel the lime helps keep the steel from corroding.
Lead and steel together not good. Lead is inert in seawater.

[SV Papillon]

here is the link

http://picasaweb.google.com/svpapillon

Jake

[shamus]

I would like to use lead pigs in this situation, but I would first like to know where the boat is floating compared with her DWL. Most boats seem to get lower in the water over time due to absorbing water, so you may not need to replace all the weight you have removed in the concrete and tanks.

[SV Papillon]

It's hard to say what the original DWL is, it may be marked under the bottom paint but, I haven't had a chance to look yet. It appears that the boat was repowered recently, last 15 yrs. It has a 85 hp perkins that is in good shape. The remenents of floor timbers around the engine would have only allowed a much smaller engine. I am guessing that the ballast up forward was added to compensate the larger engine. It's all guess work though. The boat is really tender now as there is nothing inside. I will be putting about 300' of chain in the bow as well as using it as my shop so I suppose I can factor a fair bit of weight in there. There were a couple pictures of the boat under sail in california so there may be someone out there who can coment on her.

[SV Papillon]

I found a supplier of lead pigs in seattle and am working on the numbers. The boxing idea should work out nicely.
Thanks again
Jake

[Lucky Luke]

Hi Jake,

You should NO-WAY put all this ballast back there!

This boat may effectively (and very much loks like) have been designed with unsufficient volume aft, and might always have needed weight forward. To install this new engine right aft was not the best thing to do then, and some of this forward ballast may have been put there to compensate. However, this is too much weight forward and will result in untolerable pitching.

What you need to consider is to re-install the engine further forward, and shift as many weight you can as close as possible to the center: batteries, tanks... Then, you will have, as you said, anchors and chain, and a few other items in the bows. Once you have done that, you will judge by sight as well as with some trials what weight you need and where. Pigs temporarily placed in the bilge will be used for that. Better accept these bows to be a little high.

There are lots of other comments one would do after seing your pictures (and much more after seing the boat!), but this location for the ballast is very important.

This internal ballast, better effectively constituting of lead pigs than anything else, will have to be secured by means of tie rods to the frames or boxed in by flooring (removable, strong one!).

[SV Papillon]

I do agree that there seems to be too much weight aft. I have considered moving the motor. It will involve putting in a hydraulic drive and using the motor to run a pump. Or putting the shaft log throught the main mast, probably not a good idea. What is not shown in the photos are the water tanks. They are all the way aft and seem to be quite large. Why they were put there is a mystery. They are made of steel and probably weigh several hundred pounds dry. It will involve some clever use of a sawzall to get them out and I have been procrastinating. I suppose ultimately I should be considering changing out the cast iron ballast to a slightly heavier lead one and get the weight as low as possible. Rather scary task as 12 months ago I new nothing about wood boats; even less than I do now. I'm pulling the engine in a month so I will be able to see how things sit empty and go from there. well thats enough rambling for now.
Jake

[westinghouse]

"Better accept these bows to be a little high."

I agree with Luke, you need to find a happy medium and go with that. I had to reread his post but to me 'ALL that ballast' is key. Play around with what feels good. Why not put a little lead and some new water tanks forward? You won't be the first guy to use his boot strip as a gauge of his fresh water level. And as for water lines - once you have it trimmed to satisfactory performance use the scum line as your guide the next time you haul out and paint a new boot stripe.
Nice boat!

[Lucky Luke]

.....Or putting the shaft log throught the main mast, probably not a good idea.
Not a good idea: you said it :D

What may be a better one would be to off-center the engine a little, having your shaft at an angle, passing just besides the mast. Pictures are not clear enough to say. That would mean re-positioning the stern gland....which may mean re-boring the deadwood for the stern tube....May just be impossible without actually damaging the boat.

Your information about the water tanks sounds more constructive (with a little destructive preliminary phase:rolleyes: ). They have nothing to do there. I just wonder, looking at your pics and the amount and size of tanks in the bottom of that boat, how much the previous owner was obsessed by having enough fuel, water, aso.... :eek: Acceptance of little restrictions, at times, may be a better philosophy....

Mind that tanks never replace fixed ballast: unless they are full, the liquid they contain may badly affect the stability, not improve it.

I do not think that changing the external cast iron by a lead one would be of any use. Your stability curve would change very little. Better have the correct amount of inside ballast (lead pigs).

[SV Papillon]

I do agree that the tanks were a bit on the extreme. The fuel was around 550 gal us plus a 40 gallon daytank. The tank height made the space under the decks very hard to use and nessesitated the very high cabin top shown in the pictures. We are planning for about 250 gal fuel 30 of that in a daytank. Probably 150 gallons of water. I considered trying to incorporate a seperate water tank in the bow for ballast. Leaving it full all the time unless all the other supply was contaminated then filling it with seawater. The weight to space ratio of H20 is not very good though. I will probably get the water tanks out then see how the boat sits and go from there. Moving the engine would be down on the list of things I would like to do.
As for the keel it falls into the dangerous catagory of " If I do this then I should do this" I have the interior empty, so I should probably remove the concrete to assess the keel bolts, once exposed I should probably pull a bolt, then the keel. If the keel is off then I should figure the correct ballast and put on a new keel to get the most out of the weight and get it as low as possible. Or I should stop obsessing and buy some lead pigs and get the boat done. It is hard to seperate the prudent musts from the obsessive overkill sometimes. What I really need to do is keep scraping paint and think about it for a while. On our last boat, a Tiburon 36, predesessor to the caborico 38, I pulled the cap rail and through bolted the bow after my friends sister ship had a failure. Ours was fine and the job not nessesary. I probably should have taken into account my friends obsession with beating into nasty gales. There seems to be alot of info on wood boats out there and more advice so sifting through is a challenge at times. We plan to live and cruise on the boat indefinally with no plans of selling her so we hope to get it as right as possible now.

Hopefully I will have some more photos to add as I have some time coming to work on the boat.

Jake

[Lucky Luke]

Happy to hear that you are not too sure about replacing the iron ballast with a lead one.!...that would be the start of an endless circle, and would give no percievable change to your stability below 30° heel, approx! But you better check your keel bolts, oh yes! Taking off the ballast can be a hell of a job! Why? Does the timber look damaged? Easier to drill a few holes if not sure.

With smaller tanks, would you consider reducing the cabin height? (that is not so much work, actually). She would be so much prettier. And then the deck? thinking of plywood below the planks (that would do away with all these tie rods!)? So good to have a watertight deck when living aboard;)

[SV Papillon]

My dad is up and we have gotten some work done. We pulled the port water tank out. The tank and all of the rust weighed 350 lbs. Thats 600 plus pounds that will be out of the stern. I wanted to wait on pulling the sprit till the stern was empty to see how she sits, but I have to take help when I can get it so it's off. I put some new pics on our site.

Jake

http://picasaweb.google.com/svpapillon

[Lucky Luke]

VERY good thing to have got rid of these other massive tanks: blocking the ventilation in such an area is very bad for the boat (not to mention the stress on the counter s structure, the effect on buoyancy...)
You pics show a necessary replacement of the ruddertrunk.
Earlier ones show a wrong installation of the fitttings on the bowsprit.

Nice and clean little workshop!

[SV Papillon]

The rudder trunk is on its way out, not much left of it. It was a mold factory aft behind the water tank, two garbage bags worth. What are rudder trunks made out of these days? The shaft stock is SS or monel. Should I make a new one out of SS or would copper nickle or silicon bronze be more suitible? I was happy to find all of the wood underneath the tank was solid with a good coat of red lead still on it. I hope to have the other tank out soon, then the boat will be empty except for the engine and transmission. I have 3 55 gallon drums of water in the bow right now as well but it will be a good starting point to see where the waterline is.

Jake

The shop is clean because it doesn't get used enough! If only someone would pay me to work on my boat.

[Lucky Luke]

316 SS for the ruddertrunk should do fine.

Good - and not that surprising - that the wood underneath the tanks and all was still good. The Vietnamese a well aware of which woods do or do not go along with steel/ iron (like the Lim). Yours will probably be Sao, or Bang Lang, Cho chi, or Teak. Would be interesting to know. They are all very rot-resistant.

Do you know in which part of VN she was built?

If someone would pay you to work on this boat, she would not be yours!

[SV Papillon]

You brought up a very interesting point. It was reported that the boat was built entirely out of apitong when I purchased it. However the surveyor and a couple local shiprights I have had look at things for advice said it could be something else its hard to tell. Most of the wood appears to be the same but I certainly don't know very much about species identification. The decks, cap rails and sprit are tough as nails, 60 grit sand paper did little to take it down. Some of the interior framing that was removed and cut was pretty light colored in the center and very tight grained. All in all it seems pretty rot resistant. I pulled the other water tank out, much easier being able to cut it out from the side instead of from under the cockpit. The stern is creeping back up. There is just a small day tank to come out, the rust may weigh a fair bit though. I'll do some research on the vietnamese woods. My co-worker is Vietnamese and used to hual raw timber before he came to the US I'll run the names by him.

It says Ngyuen (City, Yard?) on the paper work But I guess thats like saying John Smith built it. Pretty common name
Jake

[Lucky Luke]

Nguyen...thats the name of many million vietnamese!:D The names come from the era when the family was registered, and is then the name of the reigning emperor famiy...very few names in VN!

Very hard wood = not teak.

No other indication of where she was built?

Nora Lee, on this forum, has a boat that was built in VN, too. In Saigon. I tried to find informtion for her, but to no avail...