My father and I bought a 30ft Falmouth pilot about a year ago and have done a lot of work on her since, she is currently in the water on a swinging mooring. The idea of adding ballast comes from her tendency to roll quite a lot in any sort of sea. She does have quite a large cabin structure which doesn't do us any favors in terms of windage and height of main boom, but even so.
There are steel baffles in her bilges and a very solid floor. This may be an indication that there may have been ballast in her once upon a time. We don't have any drawings, but as far as I am aware the falmouth pilots were very similar to each other. She is long keeled and weighs 7 metric tonnes (according to the crane). She draws about 4ft of water but she floats bout 6 inches higher the her waterline.
My question is would adding ballast lower the center of gravity enough to give us a noticeable difference in stability, performance isn't as important to us in this context. I was thinking of adding a good few sandbags and see how she sails, if necessary casting some pigs of lead and stowing them properly for a more permanent solution.
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