Project – hatch lens rebedding

With the boy away at camp for 10 days, we had a weekend with only 1 child to look after and entertain, so we decided to tackle a project we have been discussing for awhile now.

Fixing our leaky boat.

We know all boats have leaks, although we do remember the previous owners telling us that their boat was unique in that it was LEAK FREE! Maybe it was last time they were on-board during a storm, but it no longer is.

Three of our hatches leak from at least one corner, there is a leak behind the fridge in the cup/Tupperware cabinet and when Ben was washing down the deck some water came in above the chart table(not a good place for water, with ALL of our electronics located in or around the chart table.)

We haven’t figured out the source of the two deck leaks yet. The one on the port side (behind the fridge) only seemed to happen when we ran the deck hose. The one on the starboard side only seemed to happen when we were washing the deck – so each have only leaked once so far.

The hatches, on the other hand, leak every time it rains. We have been able to stem the leaks by putting the hatch covers on when it rains, but we wanted to actually solve the leaks.

We aren’t sure if the hatches are leaking through the seal between the lens and the frame, or between the frame and the cabin top. Origionally we were going to rebed the whole hatch, take it off the cabin-top and re-do the sealant. Except we couldn’t get the first hatch we tried to take off, off. The screws holding it down spun but didn’t come out at all.

So we decided to go with plan B, and re-bed the lens’ to see if that fixed the leaks. The sealant around the lens’ all had craks on the corners that were leaking, so there is a good chance that this is indeed the problem.

We spent all day Saturday removing the lens’ from the forward two hatches that leak, which was quite a process. We removed the screws, and then set to digging out all the old sealant around the lens’. This took ALL DAY. We mostly used flat-head screw-drives to do the sealant removal. We also used a utility knife to get between the lens and the bottom of the frame. Once we did this we were able to ‘pop’ the lens’ out of their frames.

Then we had to remove ALL of the old sealant from the frames and the lens’. We got both of them clean and ready by Sunday afternoon.

After taping off both hatch frames and the lens, to prevent the sealant from getting everywhere, we were ready to re-bed the first hatch.

We filled it with sealant, popped the lens in and……couldn’t find the screw holes to screw it down.

We had failed to ‘dry-fit’ the lens to make sure we had it lined up right before putting the sealant in.

Ben went down below and popped the lens out so we could turn it, and we took this opportunity to put more sealant in the frame, as it didn’t look like we had enough the first time. Then we spun the lens to what we hoped was the correct orientation, 90 degrees from where we had had it before, and tried again.

Still

No

Screw

Holes.

We were both beyond frustrated that we had missed the crucial step of dry-fitting.

Now we were back to square one, and decided we had to take the whole thing apart, remove all the sealant that was starting to get tacky, and start over again with this hatch.

I took a break and went to pick up Pizza for dinner with Trixie while Ben worked at removing all the brand new sealant from the lens and the frame.

He was just finishing up as we arrived back to the boat with dinner, and we took a break to feed ourselves and Trixie.

Side Note – doing projects like this with a toddler around is kind of like a circus show. She would be playing find by herself, then she would want to ‘help’ and typically this meant wanting whatever tool you were using (be it a utility blade, screw-driver or sponge) and would not accept a suitable replacement (a different screw-driver or different sponge.)

She would then ‘help’ for about a minute, and then declare that she needed help, with whatever she was helping with.

Then, during a crucial moment, when both of us needed to be concentrating on lining up the lens, she would suddenly have black sealant all over her, and one of us would take her down-below to clean her up before she made more of a mess.

We did a great job of making a royal mess of the boat all on our own – luckily the sealant washed off the deck fairly easily. As I write this 2 days later though, I still have spots on my hands and legs – it doesn’t come off skin quite as easily.

The second hatch went much smoother, we dry fit it first, and got it done in about 10 minutes. Of course by the time we were done it was dark, and we decided to leave the other hatch for another day, as the forecast didn’t show any rain for a few days.

We got the other one done a few days later and it went just as smoothly.

A successful project, with a bit of a rocky middle, but a good end product.

Update July 23rd: As I am finishing up this post as we are on day 2 of a lot of rain, and guess what – the hatches still leak. 🙁

So while we learned how to re-bed the lens of a hatch, we apparently didn’t fix the leaks we were trying to fix which means they are leaking somewhere else, probably between the hatch and the cabin-top.

We are able to stop the leaks by putting the hatch covers on the hatches, so we can keep the boat dry, but we’d ideally like to stop the leaks altogether.

Back to the drawing board…….