Final new post - Weebles has Splashed
Sunday, February 5th 2023. Weebles is in her slip, but with an asterisk.
I had hoped splash-day would be a magnificent, seminal moment. An enormous exclamation point followed by
"The End" written in Ole English script. In reality, it ranked more of a ‘period’ to end a paragraph, perhaps a chapter. But the story continues.
When floated, Weebles was way off her lines. Very high in the bow, and a significant list to port. Why? What had changed? Sure, I moved about 200 lbs of trim-ballast from beneath the starboard side deck to the forward bow section, but still, she was riding so high in the bow.
First, the history. As many know, Willard’s have an extraordinary amount of ballast – the W36 carries 6000# for a 25,000# boat, an extremely high ratio. The ballast is distributed in three compartments: bow/stateroom section; aft lazarette section; and engine room compartment where the fast majority of the ballast is located. Ballast is poured concrete using steel punchings as aggregate, and it’s well done as far as concrete goes – and very dense with steel.
When I decided to have a bow thruster installed, I decided to remove all the ballast in the forward section not just the part for the thruster. I had the ballast weighed as it was removed by the Hack Team (no complaints here). Plan was to replace with lead ingots but they were only able to find around half the weight that was removed.
How much ballast you ask? Why don’t I use numbers? Because there’s a lost-in-translation moment coming and I want to build suspense. Yesterday as I viewed Weebles with her lopsided presence – sort of a flop-eared dog instead of a venerable steed, I went back to the text stream with Mario (owner of Hack Team). From memory, I thought they had removed 800
lbs but they had removed “in excess of 800
kgs.” 400kgs is almost 900 lbs, which is a very big difference. For context, my Toyota Matrix is listed at 2800 lbs, roughly 3x the amount of missing ballast. At the time, Hack Team was clear they only found 400 kgs to replace. With my feeble math with veneer of 2-years, I was thinking 400 lbs, which I mostly made-up with moveable ballast such as spare anchor, chain rode, two G31 AGMs for thruster; and my Sailrite sewing machine beneath the v-berth. Would have been close except for that pesky metric blunder.....
Guillermo had several workers stand on the forward-starboard bow and sure enough, I need about 350-450 kgs of ballast. Another self-inflicted wound. He thinks he knows someone who has a bunch of ingots which would be great. He also knows someone with a lead keel that would work but would need to be melted into manageable pieces. Final option is San Diego.
And then there is a list of stuff that still needs to be checked and made operational. Boatyard is about a mile from the marina so I’ll bring Weebles over and sit in the water Tuesday. Not sure if I should continue this thread – seems like this is a natural break point.
PICTURES - bit of a repeat but despite we all read Playboy Magazine for the articles, I'm similarly afraid no one will read this unless I have some eye candy.
1. Baptism. First touch of water.
2. Low in stern. I should have taken more pictures. She rides a good 4-5 inches high in the bow.
3. My Toyota Matrix (a bit blurry). I am missing ballast equaling about 1/4 to 1/3 the weight of this car. I think.....
4. Getting gear aboard. Today is my final day in my AirBNB apartment. Most of my stuff has already been moved - Team La Costa was kind enough to load from my car.