Tuesday I managed to source some scrap lead to use as proper ballast, rather than the sand bags I had used to calculate what weight would be needed, and after cleaning all the bitumen and gunge off the lead, I cut it into smaller pieces and popped them in between the frames as low down as possible.
Then I floated her in my paddle pool and arranged the weights, so far all good, and good balance, then I notice some water in the hull, it turns out that my slightly rough installation of the lead had found a week spot in the hull and created a small split.
So back to the sanding down and resin coating again, but I also poured a dam of resin between the frames at that spot, so hopefully she is watertight again. Now I'm waiting for the resin to dry, then test, and then hopefully I can start re-coating the hull :smiling:
The fetching of the lead was fun, I had posted on the local book of faces what I needed, and a guy said pop around as he had what I was looking for, so jumped in the car, and of course the battery was flat, so I took out the bike, and wouldn't you know, it had a flat tyre.
So took the other bike which was OK, and fetched the lead.
I put the battery for the car on charge, but to no avail, by Wednesday the battery still wouldn't charge, and indicated a battery fault, so I phoned my wife and asked her to go and buy a jump start pack, which she brought home and then I had to charge the pack up. So a few hours later I got the car started. Then off to town to the battery place, and they said (obviously) the battery was kaput, so a new battery was installed.
So my quest for lead ended up costing $345 (about 170 quid).
Of course not a single cuss word was uttered, (if I'm lying, I'm dying)
So an eventful few days
Garry