Have you added ballast to your bowrider?

[brick75]

I'm toying with the idea of adding a couple ballast bags to my boat, and wondering what experiences people have had with them.

What kind of boat did you put it in? And how much weight do you have to add to see a noticable difference in the wake?

Pretty much the only option I have is to put them back in the engine compartment. Most bags I've seen out there would be too big to fit, but I have come across 1 or 2 that would. Just worried that they might not be enough to make much of a difference.

 

[craze1cars]

Re: Have you added ballast to your bowrider?

Actually we have found the most luck adding ballast to the front/center of the boat. We lay a long fat sac right over the ski locker door that sticks up into the bow area, and another one right on top of it sometimes if we want more weight. I can't remember the size....sorry. Pretty sure they're something like 300 pounds each?? Maybe 400? Often we use only one because adding the second one seems to not do much more than using just one. Plus we get tired of filling and emptying them.

They're totally in the way, and incredibly inconvenient. We just crawl right over top of them or even sit on 'em and lay on them sometimes. Slow to fill, slow to empty. Often when it comes time to empty them we just pull the plug and let them drain right into the floor of the boat. Then the bilge pump takes over from there while we drive to the dock LOL!

We tried them in the back, and found it didn't help the wake much at all. Engine itself is heavy enough to keep the back end planted deep. But getting the v-nose to dig down deeper in the water seemed to shape the wake the best for the boat we were using with the sacs last year....which was a 1993 Rinker 20 ft bowrider with 5.0L V8.

I'm sure every boat is different. You just need to experiment.

 

[sebber83]

Re: Have you added ballast to your bowrider?

I add a ballast when riding with buddies. I use a fly high fat sac that weighs about 700 lbs when full. I center it with the captains seat and passenger seat, meaning one end is slightly in the bow area and the other end is a few feet from the back seat, so pretty much in the center of the boat. My boat is a 19 foot Doral Bow rider. With the sac filled, it adds 6-8 inches of wake, but the most noticeable thing is how stiff the wake becomes, it just shoots you up, I would say a gain of 35% more air.

I like centering the ballast in the boat because it planes super easy, it handles very well and it permits the bow of the boat to shape the wake, making it a little narrower than with stock weight.

Yes, the sac is in the way of foot traffic, but its sturdy vinyl and can be walked on, I always empty it out when not riding and I store it in the ski locker. I have also tried putting it in the ski locker and filling it, but I cannot load it up as much.

Hope this helps!