Replacing ballast

[Wuff]

Hello everyone. I need to replace the concrete and metal rod ballast on my boat (a Vagabond 47). Unfortunately, the boatyard flooded the ballast area with water by damaging the bilge before cleaning the bottom. However, I took out about 5400kg of ballast and dried everything out. Now I need to put the ballast back in, reusing the metal but not wanting to tie it all together with concrete. I estimate that I will use 5000kg of metal and 350kg of a mixture of granite gravel and polyester resin (I will weigh it exactly later). The mixture should have the same specific weight as concrete and therefore about the same volume.

However, I'm not sure if this idea is wise, but I'm short of alternative ideas. I would really appreciate some thoughts on this.

Thanks!
Wolfgang

[mvweebles]

Should work fine. Willard trawlers carry a lot of concrete/steel punching ballast - my 36 footer carries 6000 lbs, the 40 footer carries 7000 lbs. Granted not quite what your vagabond does but still.....

A Willard 49 owner chiseled out his old ballast and replaced like anount of scrap encapsulated in polyester. Personally, I thought the polyester would kick and the exothermic reaction would get away from him. Nope. Apparently the cool temp of the ballast modulated the heat, though he did have to quickly work in relatively small batches of 3-4 gallons.

[Uncle Bob]

As already said, provided you work in small batches with preferably a slow mix you should be fine.