Re: Water Ballast

Magico1@aol.com
Tue, 16 Mar 1999 21:39:16 EST


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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I have an old macgregor brochure around somewhere and they say that it is
very important to have the ballast deep. I also have a new MacGregor brochure
that says water ballast gives you the advantage of a fixed keel. Something is
wrong with this picture! I have seen what a MacGregor does when it gets hit by
a 25 knot puff, she will bury the rail in a heartbeat. This, combined with the
high freeboard will cause the crew to be catapulted out of the cockpit. The
only reason to build water ballasted boats is to cut costs and reduce towing
weight for these modern mousey cars. There is another potential problem with
water ballasted boats that is just surfacing, cross pollution! When you drain
the water tank on these boats some water is left in the tank. You then trailer
the boat to another body of water and deposit (bugs) into the water. The
environmentalists are looking into this problem.
Jerry Barrilleaux HMS 18 # 48 Sunshine P 14 #
564