Water Ballast

[stoway]

Hello All,

We keep our 26M docked in a marina full time. This means the ballast tanks are permanently full (with seawater). I change the ballast water every 3 months, and obviouslt take the boat out of the water onto the trailer every 6 months or so for hull cleaning.

The question is, does keeping the ballast tanks full all of the time have an adverse effect on the integrity of the hull, or have any other adverse side effects?

Thank you Ray

[jschrade]

I keep my ballast in while in the marina to try and keep it more still in the slip when the winds blow. Curious, as you are, to see if there are any adverse effects. I suspect not as I don't think much can grown in the dark?

Jim

[kitcat]

Is it my imagination, or wasn't there a thread about this a few months ago? I seem to remember that the advice was to put a Chlorine tablet into the tank, was this for saltwater or only fresh? What about pouring a gallon of bleach into a full tank of seawater, wouldn't that keep the little critters at bay too?

Paul

[NiceAft]

For the last five seasons Nice Aft has been slipped with a full ballast of fresh, Delaware River water. I have not heard of anyone having a problem because they keep their ballast full with salt water.

The only problems I have read about, is sometimes some board members report a bad odor emitted from the ballast vent. I imagine that a half gallon of bleach poured into the ballast would do the trick. You are however polluting when you empty the ballast, but I guess that two quarts of bleach in the ballast is quite diluted.

Ray

[Russ]

We keep our ballast full all season long. It's just easier and more stable.

Also, I drop a chlorine tab in to keep the stink out when emptying. Now when we empty, it smells like a swimming pool rather than rotten eggs.

Other than that, I see no reason not to keep 'em full if you wish.

--Russ

[parrothead]

Blue Heaven has been kept in a slip on the upper Chesapeake Bay with a full ballast tank for the past 5 seasons, with no known ill effects. Our waters are "brackish" [not seawater, but enough salt that barnacles grow on the pilings, and we do see jellyfish after a long period without rain].

The tank gets drained about once a month when we decide that we need to get somewhere fast, and during the first season there was a bit of foul odor from the air vent during re-filling. It was made less objectionable by the addition of a bottle of hydrogen peroxide at each re-fill, but the next winter I routed the vent through a hose up to the anchor locker drain. Now the air vent is always open [no more going below and getting under the v-berth every time the tank needs to be filled or emptied], and if there is a foul smell, we don't know about it because the air from the tank exhausts outside of the cabin. I do have a screw cap in the vent line that permits adding peroxide after a re-fill, and still do that routinely just as a marine growth inhibitor.

[Cedarsailor]

A little bit of bleach will go a long way in that tank. We add about 4 ounces and have never had a problem with growth or smell. As with many sailors, we generally leave the tank full - except if we are motoring at a higher speed for an extended period of time (>20 minutes). We had a tight maneuvering space last summer (needed to do a 180 in slightly over the boat's length to dock) and I found the boat handled better with ballast.

[Gypsy]

I kept our ballast tank full from May 2010 till Nov. 2010 with no bad effects.
There was no odor at all , unless , as I did once , open the vent under the bow berth.
It filled the cabin with a very , very foul odor.

Didn't do that again !

[ROAD Soldier]

I used to keep my ballast full at the slip with bleach in it to stop the smell which you want to do. Smell means something is growing like at the very least mildew which is an enemy of composites. We have to inspect our composite panels and pieces on helicopters to insure no mildew grows on them. Mildew will breakdown fiberglass over time. I stopped keeping the ballast full after the water temp reached over 80F and stayed there causing what you see below in a week that attached itself to the motor mount. Keeping it empty raises the motormount enough so this doesn't happen anymore.