{"id":1165,"date":"1999-11-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-30T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=1165"},"modified":"2015-10-16T12:12:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T17:12:07","slug":"water-ballast-fuel-flow-meter-flopper-stoppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/water-ballast-fuel-flow-meter-flopper-stoppers\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Ballast-Fuel Flow Meter-Flopper Stoppers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hi, I just received my video of BEOWULF in the S Pacific…my wife and I watched it twice, back to back, and were totally impressed with the video and of course BEOWULF.<\/p>\n

My specific questions are equipment related:<\/p>\n

How did you design the water ballast system and which manufacturer did you select for the pump(s) and other controls ? I own an older 60 ft steel ketch with three water tanks built into the hull. The port and starboard tanks could conceivably be converted to a ballast system. The third tank could then be used for drinking water supplied by a watermaker. What volume and therefore weight would you consider to be a minimum to use in such a system? obviously this is hull specific but I do not have any rules of thumb to use. My boat is 60,000 lb displacement. I noticed on the video that you showed a shot of a fuel\/hour gauge which was easy to read. Would this be a practical retrofit and if so which manufacturer did you use? In one of your books, I don’t remember which I have several, you had a section on anti roll flopper stoppers? I was wondering how often did you use them and how effective are they? <\/p>\n

I would appreciate any advice you can give as we are in the middle of a retrofit\/upgrade. My wife thinks that your video is going to cost us a lot of cash, but she won’t let me make an offer to purchase BEOWULF!!! Regards, John <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

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Hi John: Converting a boat not specifically designed for water ballast usually adds a layer of complication without commensurate return in comfort or speed. Having said that, if you are going to be using your fresh water or fuel supply, you will be able to use pumps of much lower capacity than what we need on BEOWULF–and for fuel they need to be designed for the rigors of pumping diesel.<\/p>\n

The sea-water pump we use on BEOWULF is made by Scott Pumps, and is a 3\/4hp model, designed for self-priming (305 524 6776 is their phone).<\/p>\n

As to controls, this can be done manually, or with electrically operated valves. We use one of the latter for dumping sea-water (with a manual override). I do not recall the mfg. however, these are readily available from most industrial plumbing suppliers.<\/p>\n

The fuel hour meter is made by Flow Scan. These are sold by most large marine distributors. They are not difficult to install, and in our case, with a controllable pitch prop, are a real help. However, with a fixed pitch prop I’m not sure I would bother.<\/p>\n

There is data on flopper-stoppers in both Offshore Cruising Encyclopedia and our new Practical Seamanship. The ones we like best are sold by West Marine and they are very effective when deployed at the end of a spinnaker pole. <\/p>\n

Good luck with your retrofit! Steve<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi, I just received my video of BEOWULF in the S Pacific…my wife and I watched it twice, back to …Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-talk","category-yacht-systems-faqs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36332,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions\/36332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}