> While you folks are putting hatches on your coffee tables --- er, kayaks
> --- remember one important thing: flush, proud, VCP or PDQ, these things
> sometimes come off. Not regularly, maybe because you forgot to secure it
> --- not that I would have any personal knowledge of an event like that,
> myself --- but they will occasionally try to file a float plan of their
> own.

> That's why they've gotta be tethered somehow --- pretty solution is a
> tether inside the hull, but a practical solution is a strap secured to a
> solid fitting or line on the deck. In addition to keeping them with you,
> it also makes it difficult to inadvertently turn hatches over, which, as
> everyone knows who knows a waterman, is a sentence to ten years of
> extremely bad luck.

> Jack

Yep. I went with the internal tether, drilling a hole through one of the brackets on the underside of each hatch cover. A bungie cord runs through this hole to an eyelet in the shear clamp on the inside. The hatch cover can be moved far enough to not be out of the way, but it can't get too far.