Replacing a hatch

We began planning the replacement of our large center hatch early last spring. The original equipment hatch, a Taylor-Made, that is no longer made, had given us pretty good service until one of the arms that locks it shut, broke off. Then it started to leak and since it is directly over the v-berth where we sleep, the hatch needed to be replaced.

Some searching around the Silverton Owner's Club yielded the fact that a hatch that would match the opening in the deck was no longer available. The opening was 22-1/4" x  22-1/4"  and after a lot of Internet research, we found a Bomar hatch that was 22" x 22."  Good enough, we thought.

When you measure these hatches you also have to consider the radius of the corners. The corners of the Old Taylor-Made hatch had quite tight radii and once we got the new hatch, we found that the corners on the new hatch were different.

Put more simply, a 22" x 22" hatch will fit in the 22-1/4" v 22-1/4" opening only if the shape of the corners are the same. In our case there wasn't an exact match.

Here's our deck with the old hatch removed.

To make the new  hatch fit, we had to enlarge the corners. We did that with a rasp fit to our electric drill.  It took a while and a number of test fits but finally, the hatch dropped into place.

The hole in the deck looked like this before the new hatch was dropped into place.

That blue tarp is there to keep the shavings from ending up in our bed.

Based on a recommendation from Defender Marine (where we bought the hatch), we bedded the new hatch in 3M Marine Adhesive Sealant Fast Cure 4000 UV. Hopefully, this stuff will work, although it is the same sticky white consistency that makes you wish you never owned a caulking gun. We cleaned up the residue with MEK, although other solvents will work.

Here's the new hatch in place. Let's hope it doesn't leak.

A couple of words about this Bomar hatch. After finding it on the Internet, we ordered it through Defender Marine, a company near us and one that we trust.. When we ordered it, Defender warned us that Bomar/Pompenette was "very slow." Turns out they were right. It took almost three months for our hatch to arrive at Defender. Our cost was $479.

The new hatch is powder coated aluminum and has two nice friction arms to hold the hatch open at any angle.The hatch window is darkened acrylic that looks okay now. Let's see how it stands up. We hope to sleep under it, nice and dry.