The Ballad Exchange

There is a mild steel 'clavicle', or curved transverse beam, running from side to side almost the full width of the main bulkhead. The mast support truss bolts through it, and it is the thing you step over to enter the V berth. There have been reports of this beam failing at the center, again perhap...

Hrrrmmm. Hrrmm? Looks for all the world like either the boat backed hard into something, folding the rudder to the side and levering the skeg forward -- or the rudder got bounced on its bottom a few times. Any corresponding damage visible on the rudder blade itself? Have a peek at the flat bottom of...

Lovely photo essay, Nick. We enjoy the playful colors you find in the Med, the Caribbean, and places like Mexico where we are going. One reason we're tarting up our boat with colors like lime, apricot, chartreuse....I think color makes cold places feel warmer and warm places feel cooler, too. The Ba...

Hi Marius. The worst places for water intrusion on our 1972 Ballad were: mast partners, aft of foredeck cleat, chainplate eyebolts, and genoa tracks. The eyebolts had putty/bog solid cores, but they were often poorly located & the drill missed them. The mast partners had no real protection at all. a...

Hi Ted. We have vague plans for a similar mainsail increase, and many many IOR-era boats have been modified this way with good resilts. As your drawings show, adding foot & leach to the main does not really upset the sail balance at all if combined with a smaller genoa; so much of the 150% G1 is beh...

Heavy machinery is definitely an option. My various friends have diggers and forklifts and tractors, but none tall enuf to clear the boat's structure. I could rent, but our town's rental company is a notorious, over-charging monopolist, plus I live 15 miles out of town so the delivery is expensive a...

Hi Mark. Thanks for the link. We're creeping along on the refit: have most of the structural done, the forepeak area completed, new foredeck hatch, etc. I want to get the engine out before starting cosmetic on the main saloon. Still torn on the engine, which is why I've waited so long to address the...

Any clever ideas for hoisting the MD6A off its mounts & up through the companionway, then over the starboard side & 3m to the ground -- with the boat on stands & the mast down? I've decided to pull the engine completely & probably either have it rebuilt or replace it with a remanufactured engine. To...

I'd be a bit worried by the loss of support. Those metal trusses are annoying and somewhat bodged together, a result of Rolf locating the forward lower shroud exactly halfway between two bulkheads. But they have that triangular depth profile for a reason: they need to transfer upwards pull on a 0.6m...

All the inner sails on the Ballad were originally intended to be set flying -- which suggests they didn't expect them to be used much! Our 'solent' will actually attach to the same halfway deck eye as the storm jib, so not quite a true solent, more of a masthead staysail. That moves the G3's center ...