S2 6.9 Sailboat "JollyMon": New Lemar Deck Hatch

It is Memorial Day weekend and I am sitting hear looking out at the lake while it rains. It is almost June 1st and I have not had the boats in yet. The flood on the lake and the crummy spring weather have put me a month behind. This weekend I plan to put the power boat in. I have a little touch up on the keel of the sailboat and that will go in too.

The old Gray Enterprises (Bomar) deck hatch had seen it's better days. The Plexiglas was cracked and someone rather poorly tried to re-glue it into the frame. One of the dogs that holds the hatch down was broken off. It was time for a replacement. I searched the web looking for a suitable hatch that would be a step up in quality from the Bomar. I still have the old hatch if anyone needs replacement parts.

The Lewmar 40 low profile hatched looked like a possible replacement. The rough opening for the Lewmar is 16 9/16 which is close to the Bomars opening of 17 1/2. I purchased the new hatch for $286.00 at Hodges Marine.

The problem is how to make the opening a little smaller. I thought of using strips of wood to trim out the inside of the hatch but decided to use epoxy to make it strong and permanent.

I had to build a mold that I could poor the liquid epoxy into to form the new hatch opening. After many hours of thinking about this I had it figured out! I used a piece of foam insulation with the tinfoil backing as the base of the mold.

I then used flexible weather stripping 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch to make the curved corners and outline of the hatch. I sanded the edges of the old opening and wiped it down with acetone. I placed the mold in the opening of the hatch, centered it and braced it from below with a piece of wood to keep it in place. I then seal the foam insulation mold to the opening with some caulk so the epoxy would not run into the cabin. I mixed up 16 ounces of resin and poured it into the mold creating the new opening.