Some more thoughts on the ballast thing...

Kunstler keeps saying it, a really good article on the Maldives, and about that word "forward"...

So, with lead going for around a dollar a pound it is no insignificant part of a boatbuilding project...

Which is not to say that there are not ways around expensive ballast as multihulls don't require it, there are less expensive things than lead that you can use as pretty much anything heavy does work, and there's always water.

Personally, I'd love to see some cruising designs with water ballast but there is a downside as water being light, it does take up some real space that most folks would prefer to use as storage or accommodation.

For those who like it in numbers, a cubic foot of seawater weighs in at around 64 pounds. I tend to think of things like this as metric so my rule of thumb is a cubic meter weighs in as a metric ton... For those wondering why everyone is not using water ballast just imagine what losing a cubic meter or two of space would do to most boats interiors.

One boat we thought long and hard about building when we were looking at a replacement for our first Loose Moose was Phil Bolger's Breakdown Schooner with water ballast. If we had built the Breakdown Schooner it would have been as a one piece boat but, you have to admit that a modular, shoal (1' 6") draft schooner of 47 feet is kinda cool... More about the design can be found in its chapter in Bolger's "Boats With an Open Mind"

Just a quick thought, but the idea of a design such as the Breakdown Schooner built in one piece with a combination of permanent ballast of steel or lead and water ballast might make a lot of sense...

Listening to Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes

So it goes...