Is adding ballast dangerous?

Is there a reason for the weight limits on boats? How much is too much when it comes to ballast. I've heard crazy stories about the massive pounds people are lugging around in their boats. I have a relatively small boat 18'-6" long and I'm tinkering with adding some kind of ballast. Should I worry?

weight that thing down

there is a reason they put that sticker on there. I would be a lot more worried overweighting an 18 foot runabout than a new wakeboard boat. Plus, the CG can ticket you if you are overweight. If you just put some small bags 250# or so you should be good though.

CG cant ticket what they don't see......
Hide it
Slide it
Ride it!!!!!!
Tons of fun to you brother.......

Really depends on the water conditions and how many people you have on board, you should be safe with at least a 600 in the ski locker or in the bow walk thru. You will have to be careful crossing your own wake on the way back to the rider, as you would in a d drive.

Older boats sat lower in the water so with a lot of weight in the bow water could come over the bow. Not really a dangerous situation but everything in the boat gets wet. My friend had an older model BU sunsetter and this happened to us several times when picking up a downed rider. It was more of an annoyance than a danger. There comes a point when you get too much weight and the wake quality suffers. An 18 ft. boat wouldn't need that much weight to increase wake size and shape. I would bet 500 pounds evenly displaced would do the trick.
I put 2,000 pounds in my 99 prostar and never had any problems, even with as many as 6 people on board. The boat didn't handle as well that full but no safety concerns.

I have a 2002 Searay 182 and have swamped the boat when I had me and 7 of my buddies all over 200lbs. in the boat. I regularly have at 1,300lbs. of body on my boat every time so I was trying to figure out how much ballast I could get away with.

I was asking a guy at the MC dealer the other day if he ever heard of anyone capsizing their boat from overweighting and he had only heard of one instance where a boat was too loaded and was capsized from rollers coming over the stern.

I'd say that's pretty encouraging news considering that this is CFL and weighted wake boats are everywhere. If you ride near bigger boats (say on a river or intercoastal - not many boats over 28ft roam the FL lakes anyway) that are throwing 3ft wakes I'd be careful loading it too much over the recomended capacity. Like the guy before said it depends on the conditions and number of people in the boat. From what I can see it's not easy too capsize on a lake from weighting beyond the recomended. I'd do some trial with people and sacs too see what works.

Anybody else heard of capsizing from overweighting?

Yes. There was a brand new Xstar that turtled on the 4th of July 2 years ago on Lake Sammamish. A boat load of people and ballast were the culprit.