My pond is only 100' across, 200' long. I did back/forth on the short axis with 100 foot ropes on front and back of boat. I sat sideways in the rowboat with 5 gallon buckets in front of me. I had a white bucket for A and colored/dark bucket for part B. The boat didn't turn around, the shore team just slide me down the pond another 6' or so and then back across. They slid me from the treated to the untreated so the product on the water was always under or behind me (as I faced the untreated water) Pictures in this thread will help:
If you have only one person and it isn't too windy then another idea is to drive a stout stake into the ground on each side and run a rope between stakes. Then your wife can be in the boat and hand over hand move the boat along the rope and then at the other side, get out, move the boat about 6-8 feet over restake and do again.
Or if there are lots of trees, just anchor to a tree on each side. You could also cable clamp a section of pvc pipe to the boat and let the guide rope go through the pvc to keep you on track.
Don't get too stressed, many have just used a trolling motor to move around. Some overlap doesn't hurt and you will be able to see by the plume on top of the water where the product is.
If you are treating the whole pond then some idea of keeping boat on a grid helps to use limited product to the best potential by even distribution. If you are focusing on a certain area where the leak is then you can just spot treat there with a trolling motor.
I didn't use bentonite. The theory behind bentonite is to give more particles in the water, more mass for the polymer to grab on to and drive down into the leaks at the bottom. My water was clear and the bottom absent vegetation, I think my part A and part B of the soilfloc found its way down just fine.
You are supposed to throw cup fulls of the product into the water. I chose to use a hand crank grass seed spreader. I took a half cup measuring cup and took 1/2 cup of part A and put in the spreader hopper, then 1/2 cup B and then 1/2 cup A and 1/2 cup B using even ratio/layers of A and B till the hopper was full. Then as boat was moving, I steadily turned the crank which mixed product and spread it in a nice even mist on the water. I feel this gives a good even coating but the factory specs say a clump tossed in of A followed by a clump of B roughly in the same area is just as good. I think our coverage looks better as you see an even film. This film spreads out a bit before it sinks and with each lane of the boat overlapping a bit I think we had good coverage.
The 2 units that I did roughly covered more than my 1/4 acre so I ended up going back with the extra and almost recovered the whole area again.
I'm losing water again but our ground water is low, drought conditions here and high heat and high evaporation. I have pumped it up a few times already. However, when I drive sticks into the bottom you can clearly feel a hard skin give way as the stick is going through the congealed soilfloc layer then hits the sand below it.
When we hit full pool after the next big rain, I hope to apply the little I have left in buckets in my basement just for good measure.
