Ships ballast and the chinese demand for scrap metal

When I bought Kaipuke she had no ballast. She is designed to carry 6.5 tonne in the keel.

I watched the price of lead go from $1,400/tonne to $3,200/tonne in the space of 12 months. At the current price it was going to cost over $20k just for lead ballast. The scrap metal dealers told me that this was because every available bit of scrap metal, of just about any kind was going to China, and constantly pushing the prices up.

I had a serious look at alternatives (cos I was too mean to pay for lead). After much research I arrived at the conclusion that I could ballast with steel punchings, set in polyester resin. I did a number of calculations, based on the weight per cubic metre of the ballast, the available volume of each of the keel compartments, and the required weight distribution fore and aft.

I found a supplier of the punching (I tell people that punching are the holes out of colanders) who was prepared to sell me the punchings at scrap value, which was about $200/tonne at the time. I found a supplier of resin with a 200 litre drum of polyester gell coat, near it's use-by date for $800. So my ballast cost $200 x 6 tonne = $1,200 plus $800 for resin = $2,000, or 1/10th the cost of lead ballast. ...Brilliant !!!