Posted by andy bolger on July 31, 2003 at 22:37:31 from 213.122.232.91 user beardbiter.
In Reply to: Re: another plot-defining nautical mishap posted by Prue Eckett on July 31, 2003 at 21:57:19:
I feel like the Lewis Carrol character who believed four contradictorary things before breakfast on this one. Of course the answer is in the heading but...
Well I've put a number of holes in a number of boats in my time and none of them sank and they were all plywood affairs. My old ex -hire Broads dinghy, Puddleduck, was clinker and I think I would have had to try very hard to sink her. Mind you an uncontrolled jibe in a laden lug sail boat on to a sharp rock probably counts as trying quite hard. But even so would Swallow have sunk? I submerged Puddleduck (to swell the planks) and it never occured to me that she might sink so it was just as well that she didn't, despite avery hefty centreplate. But yet again, disasters usually involve a chain of unfortuante events, mostly inconsequential in themselves, conspiring to reek havoc.
Anyway what I've wondered for a longtime is why Swallow had ballast?
Was it to compensate for her lack of centrplate? Was this a common arrangement at the time? (I seem to remember that Pinta in Bevis had ballast. As many modern lug sail dinghies are made of light weight materials would ballast help reproduce that more sedate traditional feel?
I'm sure someone out there knows the answers.