Marigot Bay, St. Lucia.

Although we’ve designed fuel and fresh water tanks into many of our yachts which could be used for ballasting, Beowulf is the first of our boats in which we’ve had separate salt water ballast tanks. While she is quite stiff without the use of water ballast, pumping in anywhere from one to three or more tons of sea water gives us multihull-like heel angles.

As with everything aboard boats water ballast is very much a compromise issue – and the bigger the boat, the less you have to compromise. In our case, there is no impact on the interior space from the ballast tanks, all of which are below counter or bunk height.

Our system is set up to be simple and easy to operate. The concept is that the water ballast is used for passaging, rather than short daysails. Controls for adding or dumping ballast are located in the pilot house where they are handy. If we tack or jibe and need to move the ballast from one side to another one of us has to go below and adjust two selector valves.

On most passages we fill the ballast tank and forget about it. Sometimes we will be carrying too much ballast, but the slight reduction in speed is more than offset by the upright sailing angle.

Beowulf at anchor in Marigot Bay.

Last month when we and the Neri’s were sailing from Bequia to St. Lucia the ballast system got a pretty good workout as the winds varied tremendously during the trip. Starting out from Bequia we were reaching in 15 to 18 knots of wind, carrying plain sail. As soon as we cleared the anchorage Linda flipped the pilot house switch which turns on the 3/4hp, 60 gallon/minute pump in the engine room. You can watch the tanks fill with a “Tank Tender” guage. But usually we just wait until we see the overflow on deck from the air vents, and then turn off the pump.

Adding full ballast (7500 pounds) on a reach like this reduces heel about seven degrees and increases boat speed 1.5 knots. The key thing with the wind on the beam is this gives us the power to break through our first wave drag “hump” and begin to plane on the bow wave (otherwise, we’d have to wait for a lot more wind and be reefed down).

As we approached the south end of St. Vincent the wind began to lighten. To dump ballast Linda flips another toggle which energizes a solenoid valve (which is equipped with a manual override – just in case). As the valve opens the salt water runs out through a standpipe located aft of the keel. Filling or dumping ballast takes between 12 and 18 minutes, depending on how fast we are going.

Heading up the coast of St. Vincent the wind is dead on the nose, so we roll up the jib and motorsail. In this mode we always have the ballast tanks empty. As we approach the north end of the island the wind clocks a bit so that we can lay the south end of St. Lucia, and we begin to refill the ballast tank on the starboard side. The breeze comes back in the 15-knot range, so we fill the tank half way, bringing heel from 15 to 10 degrees – as our speed climbs from 9.5 to 10.2 knots on the wind. Ten minutes later the wind is in the low 20s and we’re topping off the ballast tank. We’re sailing at a true wind angle of 52 degrees, apparent is 33, doing 10.5 to 11 knots, and heeling 15 degrees.

The bottom of our ballast tanks are below the waterline when the boat is at rest. If we remember to dump the ballast while there is still some breeze and we are heeled over, gravity pulls it out. However, if we forget in the excitement of a new landfall, we have a “Y” valve on one of out PAR diaphragm bilge pumps (7 gallons per minute) to suck out the last little bit of salt.

We’ve found that if we are running in gale or storm strength winds, ballasting the boat by the stern helps steering – reducing what is a very light helm load even further. On occasion when we are anchored with a beam swell (yuck!) if we fill both side tanks – that’s 15,000 pounds of additional dsplacement – it is often enough to stop our rolling in sync wth the waves.

We love our salt water ballast!