Stern low in water, advice please

[ZDM]

Hello, first time posting. Proud new owner of a Mercator Offshore 30. I noticed that the stern is low in the water and she is not sitting on her lines. We just got the boat so she is empty of gear. Engine, batteries and fuel tank located aft. Water tank with about 7g in it under v berth, small Danforth with 30ft 5/16 and 100ft rode on bow. Should this be cause for concern? Hopefully the pictures are helpful.

[Pandor]

7 gal water tank under the v-berth? Surely a typo. But however big it is, fill it up and let it even the keel. Your pix don’t look that bad. And she isn’t really empty of gear, is she? I can see loads of misc things on deck, so have to also assume the cockpit lockers are full.

[ZDM]

Ok cool, sorry I meant there's roughly 7g in the water currently. I reached out to previous owner who said there is still list with water tank full.

[Pandor]

Ok. My bad. I forgot to start with “congratulations on the new boat.” She’s a beauty. But boats don’t always sit on their lines. You said list above, but you meant trim up by the bow. The reason you don’t notice these issues on all of your neighbors’ boats is they have already tried to minimize them. If you have trim by the bow, keep all bow tanks full and minimize storage back aft. If you still don’t like how it looks, buy more anchor chain. Even straight out of the factory you’ll have the same issues.

[ZDM]

Ok got it, trim. Sweet thanks for the advice! Was reassuring.

[MicHughV]

I see a lot of stuff attached to the stern rail....and that radar tower post...step ladder and various other things.
All that weight is at the very end of the boat where it will produce the biggest difference in trim.
Just add other stuff to towards the bow and you'll have her back on her lines in not time.

[ZDM]

Ok sweet ����

[SailingHarmonie]

Fixing trim issues is NOT best handled by just adding weight to the other end of the other end of the boat.

A really empty boat with 1000 lbs of ballast added in the mif]Elle of the boat will sail much better and more comfortably than the same boat with 500 lbs in the bow and 500 lbs in the stern.

A boat with weight concentrated in the ends will tend to “hobbyhorse” when running into a chop. It will be mush slower as energy is wasted in pitching up and down, and the ride will be rough and wet.

Do not just dump weight into the bow. Rather move as much as possible toward the middle of the boat, and as low as possible.

As others have pointed out, that boat is hardly “empty”. If that was my boat, I’d lose the radar tower and put the scanner on the mast. Move everything heavy to the middle of the boat, and every thing light to the stern.

Once you have done everything you can, be happy with what you have. Adding weight to the bow of a boat is never going to be a good thing for performance.

[TrentePieds]

ZDM:

You can't know if she's floating "on her lines" just by looking at her. Her "boot top" may have been painted in the wrong place :-)!

Here is what you do:

Take ALL the clobber out of her, fill the potable water tank and the fuel tank HALF full. Now lay a spirit level pointing fore and aft on the sole in the cabin. If the sole isn't level (horizontal) fore and aft, then move something heavy, like a full 5 gallon fuel can, fore and aft until the level shows that the sole IS horizontal fore'n'aft. Then she'll be "on her lines".

The reason that works is that the designer, when he develops the "lines drawing", so designs the interior of the cabin that the cabin sole is in a plane parallel to the "design water line plane".

You can take it that a 30-footer will "sink down into the water" (increase her draft) one extra inch for every 750 lbs. of "stuff" you take aboard. In this context "stuff" includes people :-).

Learn to stow your "stuff" throughout the boat so that she remains "on her lines". But in "real life" this isn't super-critical in a cruising boat. A well-grown man, say 240 lbs., moving from one end of the boat to the other really doesn't change the trim enuff to notice!

All the best :-)

TrentePieds

[MicHughV]

One other little thing to think about as Trentepieds noted above..

Years ago, I built my first boat. One of the last things I did was to paint the boot stripe on it. I thought I had every thing dialed in correctly, but apparently I didn't, as the boat sank into the water at it's launch, it looked like the stern had squatted, but the boat was on it's lines, the boot stripe wasn't.

I had to re-do this at my first haul out.

I've also noticed many boats get loaded down with a variety cruising paraphernalia, causing the boot stripe to disappear to such an extent that a new boot stripe has to be painted on several inches higher than the original.

At the end of the day, I would not be overly perturbed by it. Trim the boat as best you can with what you've got and go sailing.

[cal40john]

Rare, but if you can find other boats like yours and look at them. All the Cal 34s mark 1 I've seen are the same as my friend's, the original boot stripe has the stern squatting, and the bow knuckle at the surface. The Mark 2 isn't like that.

[Kettlewell]

My two cents is that a lot of smaller older boats had big water tanks under the forward V-berth, which when full would make the boat go bow down if not for the weight aft. Not ideal for pitching motion to have weight in both ends of the boat, but that's not uncommon. Try to concentrate movable weight near the center of the boat and low down as much as possible. For example, could the batteries be moved forward to the main cabin?

[deblen]

Congrats!
There is info on Google
Cheers/Len
https://www.sailnet.com/threads/merc...hore-30.57208/

[MicHughV]

Once sailboats are underway, they roll from side to side, pitch forward and back, develop bow and stern waves, people moving around, wave action, other boat wakes, wave crests, etc, etc, there is a lot going on at any one time.
Once the water supply (and food) gets used up and the beer allotment has shrunk, several 100 lbs of weight is also gone.
To focus on a possible 1" out of trim is ludicrous imo.

[OS2Dude]

Small boats are sensitive to weight distribution. When you load her up, just try to keep in mind counter balancing the weight.