Water Ballast Controls

One of the key jobs to be done this year was the relocation of all water ballast controls into the cockpit. It used to be the case that I would wait until I was clear of other yachts and obstacles and then go down below, climb into the back of the boat and play with the leavers. What a bonkers carry on I hear you say and you’d be right.
Now, thanks to the skills of my father Phil and Jan (with moral support and banging tunes from me) our water ballast craziness of the past is no more.
Working from left to right, the big blue leaver controls the transfer valve that lets water move from tank to tank. The middle orange leaver allows us to specify the tank we wish to fill and the last orange leaver allows us to dump the water from the tank/tanks.

Each leaver is connected to a solid plastic rod. The rod passes through a waterproof connection mounted into the cockpit sole and then connects to its respective valve.