I put everything in behind the casting deck bulkhead, approximately one third down the length of the boat. I filled this centre third with all of the weight placing the esky in the middle length ways. Partly because it is large and heavy but also his enabled us to use the esky as a deck to get up the front and get an even number of jerry cans each side. Can number 13 was placed in front of the esky in the middle. As did the two blocks of water. Seating is setup on the transom and it turned out we were a little too nose heavy and I couldn't steer well at low speed. So bringing the container of dry food, clothes packs, the carton of beer and tackle bag back to the transom was enough to make a difference. Then as I burnt the first 10 litres it was enough to correct the trim of the boat. I think would limit myself to 10 or 11 cans in future for safety.mickkk wrote: Wow, good to see ya boat could take that much weight.
Next question, did you find most weight at the back, mid of front of the boat?
I know that it would be some what spread through out the boat, just trying to work out where you loaded the heaviest items of the boat.
I would love to do these type of long trips, with a goal of doing a few weeks up around the vertical water falls, in the Kimberley.
So far my longest trip is a few days at the top of the tiwis (where I didn't take enough fuel)
I don't think you would want to go through the waterfalls too heavy. If time permits you can always go to Dinah, load up a heap of jerry's or a few eskies with water and have a cruise around to see how the boat handles. From past experiences, I know that at speed my boat likes weight as far to the front as I can get it. Also, I have done a couple of trips with up to 7 cans, progressively getting heavier and therefore knew that it would work in the above configuration. So I guess now I have a good feel about how much I can really load up which I would estimate is now 480kg, including fuel under the floor (about 40kg less than I had on this trip). However, if you don't have a base camp to drop the fuel you need to consider the practical limits of fishing with that much gear on the deck.
Basically, I would be trying to get the majority of the mass as low in the centre of the boat as possible and filling that space, working to the back. If you are going heavy too much weight forward will kill your steering and also put you at risk of having a wave come over the bow. You need to strap everything down too. I set it up so everything was wedged in and then I put two cleats in the deck with a tie down strap over the back cans and esky to make sure that things couldn't slide backwards. The tie downs were positioned so the strap pulled everything forward into the bulkhead.
I would also stress that you should be prepared stop and make adjustments early and if need be abort. If moving the weight didn't help I was prepared to ditch some fuel and explore less. One last thing. I knew I was travelling on a small tidal movement and that the winds were not going to exceed 10 knots.
Dan