Nomad Willy
Guru
This post was in response to something Art said but so far off topic I'm posting it here.
Weight placement and ballast is not a hard line cast in stone thing. However you are very right otherwise but just because a boat is not home built or home designed or both dosn't mean it was marketed as ideal.
When I worked at Uniflite for a time I was in charge of re-arranging the installed location of heavy equipment .... Batts, holding tanks, gen sets, water heaters ect ect. The necessity for me to do that arises from the fact that most all the boats were different so we had to get a pool of information that could be referenced to a known configuration that resulted in a boat that would when launched float without a list. Obviously w a stock boat it wouldn't be necessary.
But frequently the same hull is used for boats w extreme differences in weight distribution. Have you ever seen a boat that is offered as an twin engined IO and also a single engined OB? Not uncommon at all. And a straight IB on the same hull as V drives w the engines in the stern.
I, to some extent fear having a bow heavy boat in following seas. And I'm a bit over ballasted in the stern than a stock Willard. And speaking of Willard's some have their engines further fwd than others.
So it's common for fairly significant variations to exist on stock manufactured boats so it would seem that fairly small changes in weight distribution should not be a problem. However if one has a boat w twin IOs adding weight like an extra battery, water tank or other stuff that represents some weight mounting it fwd would seem best. Making a bad situation worse is a real possibility. The perfect boat (in my opinion) would have most heavy things quite close to the center of then boat or slightly aft. Or if one had a port list and then installed a gen set on the port side ....
Weight placement and ballast is not a hard line cast in stone thing. However you are very right otherwise but just because a boat is not home built or home designed or both dosn't mean it was marketed as ideal.
When I worked at Uniflite for a time I was in charge of re-arranging the installed location of heavy equipment .... Batts, holding tanks, gen sets, water heaters ect ect. The necessity for me to do that arises from the fact that most all the boats were different so we had to get a pool of information that could be referenced to a known configuration that resulted in a boat that would when launched float without a list. Obviously w a stock boat it wouldn't be necessary.
But frequently the same hull is used for boats w extreme differences in weight distribution. Have you ever seen a boat that is offered as an twin engined IO and also a single engined OB? Not uncommon at all. And a straight IB on the same hull as V drives w the engines in the stern.
I, to some extent fear having a bow heavy boat in following seas. And I'm a bit over ballasted in the stern than a stock Willard. And speaking of Willard's some have their engines further fwd than others.
So it's common for fairly significant variations to exist on stock manufactured boats so it would seem that fairly small changes in weight distribution should not be a problem. However if one has a boat w twin IOs adding weight like an extra battery, water tank or other stuff that represents some weight mounting it fwd would seem best. Making a bad situation worse is a real possibility. The perfect boat (in my opinion) would have most heavy things quite close to the center of then boat or slightly aft. Or if one had a port list and then installed a gen set on the port side ....