Removing Harry’s Overhead Hatch: Filling In the Forward Deck Opening
Cutting a big hole in the boat isn’t unusual on this refit. This particular hole is the reason the whole flush hatch programme started in the first place.
The hatch that started it all
The forward hatch over Harry’s bunk was the single worst offender in the boat’s original leaking problem — the exact hatch that drove the entire investigation into why the original aluminium hatches were failing, and the entire redesign that followed. Rather than replacing it with a smaller version of the same hatch, the decision here was to remove it entirely, filling the opening in completely and replacing it with a side portlight-style hatch instead, matching the same design already used elsewhere on the boat.
Why underhung beats overhead in this specific spot
Originally, this section carried a portlight positioned partway up the hull side — genuinely troublesome, leaking regularly, awkwardly placed, and prone to being left open, with the predictable result of a wet bunk underneath it. The replacement goes in tucked under the gunwale instead, positioned so it never sits directly exposed to rain landing on deck.
It’s a fair question why moving a leak-prone opening into what looks like a more exposed spot on the hull side makes sense — the honest answer is that this new hatch design meets full offshore hatch and hull loading requirements, the same engineering standard covered in the hatch design series. Genuine concern only kicks in around a full pitchpole scenario with the bow driven several metres underwater — and at that point, a leaking hatch is very much the least of anyone’s problems on board.
Filling a curved deck opening, one strip at a time
Filling the old hatch cutout meant fitting foam into an opening that isn’t flat — the deck carries real camber across its width, so a single solid foam plug simply wouldn’t conform to the shape. The fix: five separate foam strips, individually shaped to fit the curve, rather than one oversized piece forced into a shape it can’t naturally take. Getting each strip to seat properly against the surrounding structure, with no gaps underneath, took real patience — foam that looks like it fits from the outside can still be sitting proud of a gap that would compromise the whole repair if left unaddressed.
Laminating on the outside: a deliberate hand-layup, not a shortcut
With the foam plug in place, the outer skin went on as two layers of 1200g glass, hand-laminated rather than infused — a genuine trade-off made openly rather than glossed over. Infusion would have allowed more, lighter reinforcing layers for the same strength, giving a technically better result. But infusion setup takes real time, and with a genuine schedule pressure to get the boat finished rather than endlessly optimising one deck panel, hand lamination won out as the practical choice for this particular job.
The resin itself needed to be genuinely thin and runny for the cold conditions on the day — cold resin thickens, and a thick resin doesn’t wet out heavy 1200g glass properly by hand. Had this section been infused instead, a lighter finishing layer — either a single 300g mat or two layers of 200g — would have gone on top specifically for durability, since a mechanically woven cloth resists surface wear and abrasion better than the heavier structural layers underneath it alone.
Squeegee over roller, and why it matters
Working a squeegee across a stitched multi-axial laminate does two jobs simultaneously — consolidating the layup and pushing trapped air out to the laminate’s edge — in a way a roller genuinely can’t match. A squeegee only fails on chopped strand mat, where dragging it across the surface pulls loose fibres apart rather than pressing them down; a stitched fabric, held together mechanically rather than just by resin, tolerates squeegee pressure without that problem. It’s also simply easier to keep clean between uses than a roller, which in practice tends to become a single-use tool on a job like this.
A structural detail worth understanding: this panel needs both skins
A single laminated skin over the foam core — even two heavy layers of 1200g glass — isn’t structurally sufficient on its own. The panel needs its inner skin laminated too before it can genuinely carry load or be walked on; an outer skin by itself leaves the sandwich structure incomplete. An inner skin alone, without the outer layer, would technically hold under tension loading, but it’s not a configuration anyone would actually recommend running with.
Timing the bog: why polyester needs to wait, not go wet-on-wet
Applying filler directly onto still-wet polyester resin isn’t the right sequence, despite how tempting it might be to save a step. Polyester needs to gel off first — once it has, a genuine chemical secondary bond still forms between the cured layer and new material applied on top, even though the first layer has already gone off. Getting that timing right avoids a weaker mechanical-only bond that gel-stage application would otherwise risk.
A quiet lesson in spotting a lazy infusion job
One detail worth knowing if you’re ever assessing someone else’s infusion work: resin feed tubing needs to be pleated up off the laminate surface, with extra slack fabric built in specifically to let material drape around hoses, pipes, and other three-dimensional obstacles rather than being pulled taut against them. Skip that step, and the vacuum literally sucks the resin tube down flat against the job, dragging a visible ridge of resin-rich laminate along wherever the tube ran — a telltale spiral or snaking mark visible on the inside skin of a finished hull. It’s a small, easily overlooked setup detail, and one of the clearest tells of how carefully — or carelessly — an infusion job was actually set up.
A stiffer deck panel, and one less stiffener needed elsewhere
Filling this hatch and building the panel back up as a proper laminated structure adds real stiffness to this whole section of deck — enough, in fact, to remove the need for a separate internal stiffener between the stanchion base and the inboard structure that would otherwise have been required. One repair solving two structural problems at once, rather than requiring a second dedicated fix layered on top of the first.
Not everyone was convinced
Worth being honest about the human side of a decision like this: Harry wasn’t fully on board with losing the hatch over his own bunk, even understanding the leak history behind the decision. It’s an easy tension to recognise on any family refit — the person who suffers the inconvenience of a leak isn’t always the same person who has to deal with the consequences of fixing it, and a kid’s lived memory of “it wasn’t that bad” doesn’t always match the adult’s memory of mopping out a wet bunk. The side hatch replacing it follows a design already proven and genuinely liked elsewhere on comparable boats — reason enough to commit to the change even without universal buy-in from everyone living with the result.