22-1/2" X 22-1/2" with a radius of about 4-1/2" was what t was. We also found a part number on it: Taylor Made 66016. Seems that Taylor still makes hatches but nothing even close in size to our old one. That's okay by us since Taylor isn't exactly the quality level we are looking for.
It seems that there are only about companies that make hatches and after a lot of Internet searches, we found a Bomar hatch that measures 22-1/8" X 22-1/8." We felt that we could build up the opening in the deck to accommodate that extra 3/8" We called Defender Marine (they show this hatch in their on-line listing) only to be told that "Bomar is slow. Delivery would be 6 to 8 weeks." We intend to be in the water in Norwich by then, so the old hatch took on new value.
Oh, the price of the new Bomar hatch? $560.00. We shopped that price around but found that Defender (where we could pick it up and avoid shipping charges) was the best deal.
We'll order the new Bomar hatch this week, but in the meantime, we'll need the old hatch re-installed.
The opening in the deck was pretty grungy with all the old adhesive still there.
We applied our trusty heat gun and soon, the mounting surface was fairly clean.
We did the same heat gun routine the the mounting surface of the old hatch and then slipped it
back into position.
We would have secured the hatch properly but we still have to deal with that crack. We can repair it but not until the temperature gets to a nice solid 50 degrees. Probably a good time to get rid of that unused anchor cleat just forward of the hatch, too.
So, for now, we'll move on to other things on our list.
On Sunday, we made up a new battery cable from the 1/0 battery cable that we had left over from rewiring our old Chris Craft. We have one of those massive crimping tools on loan to the boatyard so we stopped in the office and used it to crimp on new connectors.
Last time we were down working in the battery area, we spotted one cable that looked fairly crappy. Our new cable would be the replacement..
Actually, all of the old battery cables on this boat could use some work, although that will have to wait until next winter. The cables that the PO installed are a mixture of sizes (mostly # 2 and # 4) and as you'll see in the next photo, they aren't color coded correctly. (That jumper paralleling the grounds on the two port batteries should be black.) Anyway, we replaced the crappy old cable with our new one.
In doing this, we had to dismount one of the two Perko battery selector switches. No sense doing a half-assed job, so we disconnected everything, burnished the connectors that connect to the battery switches, coated everything with electrolydic grease and reconnected everything.
Before we closed the engine hatches, we checked the grounds. They run from the batteries to a bolt on the back of the transmission housing. There they meet another cable that runs to the same place on the other engine. We pulled those off too, burnished them and reconnected everything using electrical grease. Note to self: There are much better places on the engine blocks themselves to make a primary DC ground. We'll take care of that next winter, too.
We closed everything up and went to the next thing on our list.
We've been lugging around 200-300 feet of old, dried-out anchor line that has been stored in a plastic milk crate in the space under our v-berth. It was there when we bought the boat and it was time to save a little weight by removing it. It probably weighed 75 lbs. With new summer's gas prices at $5.00 to $6.00 a gallon, any weight saving is worthwhile. Of course, if that was 75 lbs. of vodka, we would have happily left it there.
Next, the aluminum window frames along the sides of our cabin look pretty shabby. The black paint (or whatever it was) that Silverton applied had worn away in places. We want to repaint with black Rustoleum but first, we have to tape off adjoining fiberglass. Up we went on our ladder and carefully masked the areas on which we don't want black paint.
Last winter, we used black Rustoleum, applied with a brush, on the frame that surrounds our sliding door and it has held up perfectly.
It's still too cold here to paint but we'll get to that soon.
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