Ballast Bags | Making & Filling

With time on my hands and unable to do much in the way of painting I decided to make the ballast bags.

The build manual states that a minimum of 36kg should be stowed either side of the centreboard case, beneath the removable floorboards. It adds that more might be required for sailing solo or lightly loaded, and suggests that adding 50% more would not be too much.

I decided to go for 100kg in total and see how she sails. I can always add or remove ballast, as required.

I purchased 100kg of lead pellets many moons ago, when I thought I was close to launching. They are offcuts from some manufacturing process; small and ideal for this purpose.

This is what they look like.

At the same time I selected a waterproof material called Phifertex to make the bags, and worked out that I would need fourteen bags - ten holding 8kg and four holding 5kg.

The bags would need to be 13" long and 7 1/2" wide to fill the bilge compartment, so I cut enough 13" squares to make the bags. They were ready to go when needed.

The sewing thread needed to be waterproof and rotproof, and suitable for use on a domestic sewing machine. I found that this type of thread is called V69, and I purchased a spool of the Invincible brand.

The services of Mrs Boatbuilder were now required. I have absolutely no idea how to operate a sewing machine, but she is an ace.

Here she is sewing the sides of the bags together.

And here are some empty bags. You can see that we left a gap in one corner to fill them with lead.

The bags were then filled using a ladle and a funnel to pour the pellets into each bag, like this.

I clamped each filled bag shut until they could all be sealed. Here they are.

Luckily the sewing machinist was available immediately, and here she is sealing the bags.

We took the machine into the workshop rather than move 100kg of lead into the house and back again.

And here is the finished article.

Very neat and tidy.

And miraculously this entire activity was accomplished in a single day, which is completely unheard of in this build!

That was fun.

I stashed the finished bags away in a corner, ready for installation at launch time. Whenever that might be...