Whole Hog question

The pig roast was fantastic. It took way longer than it should have. We pulled the pig out of ice and injected with mojo sauce.I put the pig on at 7:50 AM. Charcoal was ashed over at 8:30, which is when time is supposed to start. Every hour we added 10lbs of charcoal. Every other hour we removed ash buildup. We flipped the pig from its back down to up at 3:00PM. It should have been ready to flip by 12:30. The ham internal temp was 175. When we flipped it over, we scored the skin. It looked a little pink to me. I checked with a hand thermometer and it showed temp at 158, near the skin. Uh oh. Normally, the skin ably takes 1/2 hour to crisp. This took 2.25 hours. We finally pulled the pig out to rest for 30-45 minutes. That lasted for 20 minutes because I thought a riot was going to break out. My buddy rick and I started pulling from one half of the pig and let people have at the other half if they wanted. The skin was the best part of the whole thing! It was an amazing day with good friends!

I had some friends that have cooked with this box before try to help troubleshoot the cook time. Ash acts as an insulator. I will remove the ash each time I add more charcoal. They said every time the lid is cracked open, it will add an extra half hour to cook time. That was not a problem, because I didn’t open the lid until we flipped the pig. One last suggestion was that the lid was not making a good seal and heat was escaping. I did have my probes for the thermoworks running under the lid half way down the lid. Obviously there was a slight gap there. I wonder if that could have been a source of heat loss.