When we got WeatherWitch, all of her hatches were watertight but heavily crazed, which reduces the strength of the acrylic. As such, we’d been making an effort not to walk, let alone jump, on the the hatches in a successful bit to keep them watertight and not getting any worse.
We then found a great company, Eagle Boat Windows, who are not only able to fully refurbish our Goiot hatches but also supply us with fully secure temporary hatch lids through their Lids4Lend for once we’ve taken our current ones off. A much better solution (in our book anyway) than scrabbling round trying to make our own temporary DIY cover to keep the water out.
Over the winter we managed to get our small hatches refurbished with new acrylic and seals and now it’s the turn on the main hatches (saloon and foredeck).
As we discovered when getting the little hatch lids off to send off for refurbishing, removing the hatch lids takes a lot of patience getting the screws and bolts out (thankfully this time no banana shaped bolts!) followed by careful and repeated application of a chisel to release the sealant under the hinge section.
The saloon hatch had the added complication of kicker dodging, until Mike removed the base of it so that he could tie it up out of the way. After that, the saloon hatch ended up putting up less of a fight that the forehatch so was soon removed. We’re hoping that it shouldn’t take longer than a month to get them refurbished and refitted, so the plan is to back in sailing condition for September.
