Sonrisa has always sat a little low in the bow.  According to the original owner this was due to a mistake when her lead ballast was poured.  As a result water didn’t drain quite right on deck or in the bilge.  The problem was made worse when we installed a newer lighter engine.  So we decided to add 500lbs of lead to an extremely inaccessible area of the bilge, directly under the engine and all the way aft.

We could not physically reach most of the area, so the job called for some creative tools.

After prepping the surface, we glassed in a wall of marine plywood with several layers of cloth and epoxy.

For some reason the lead shot that we purchased was full of small bits of paper, which added to it’s volume.  We rigged up a vacuum cleaner in reverse which caused an air flow over the lead shot as we poured it through a funnel.  The lighter paper was blown out into a large garbage bag catchment system while the heavy lead fell down into a bucket.  This looked ridiculous but worked well.

Adding the shot to the new compartment.

Sealed it all up with plywood and more cloth and epoxy, which also required some ridiculous strategies given that we couldn’t reach our arms more than half way back.

Painted it up.  Done!  She new sits nice and even in the water.