Ballast in a Kayak

[wilsoj2]

I believe Winters answered your original question by positing that most people have been sold/lead to believe larger boats are good/appropriate when often they are not. So perhaps the issue should not be the advisability of using ballast to make a too big boat better, but rather the advisability of adjusting the opinion of what constitutes a good sized boat for most use. How many ever go camping for more than a weekend or say around three nights? Given a decent 16' boat will handle that easily, why lug around an 18' expedition boat?

Ed Lawson

Isn't this why so many of us have more than one boat?

Also, sometimes an expedition length boat can be more fun NOT carrying its ideal load. My Aquanaut is much livelier carrying a light load

[EEL]

Given that many of us favor boats with an expeditionary heritage that were originally designed to perform optimally with significant more weight in them than the paddler alone, are we missing out on an important tool to improve our boats performance by not experimenting with ballast?

Based on the following, the answer is "Yes"..This past weekend Gail and I experimented with adding ballast to the Rumor. At 110# she has a hard time finding boats that fit and are sporty. She bought a Rumor for a day, fun boat to compliment the Force 3 which is a "just right" camping/cruising boat. While the Rumor performed beautifully, in textured water she described it as "bicycling on ice" and thought it would have to go.Over the weekend we did a series of experiments by adding MSR water bladders as ballast. With 30# over summer day kit representing a camping load (the Rumor has the volumey for at least a weekend) she found the boat too dull to be fun. Hmmmm. 20# over still too dull. At 10# the boat was just mellowed out enough to be fun and no more biking on ice and its performance in wind and textured, confused water was exemplary. As a result Gail went from, "I have to sell it" to the final vote of confidence " I want a compass installed."

The conclusion seems to be that for some boats, you really need to be in the right displacement window for the boat to work and often it takes only a small amount of weight to get there. I still think if you need to add more than a very modest amount of weight, the boat is simply too big; but obviously it can pay to experiment a bit if you are close.

Ed Lawson