For what it's worth...

Just as I was finishing my boat there were several stories related on the board here about internal bungie attachment hooks pulling off so I gave a little additional thought to how I configured mine. My hatches have two sets of hooks on them. Each hook pair is made from a single piece of wood that spans the width of the hatch. This accomplished two things -- it gives a much larger surface area for attaching the hook to the lid (in my case about 7" x 1/2"), and it makes it so that the force between the hook and the lid has mostly a purely vertical component (all of the horizontal forces are contained solely within the hook piece itself -- other hooks I've seen are much smaller individually installed hooks that are subjected to forces such that the bungee tends to want to sort of twist them off). Also, I'm not sure if this would make any difference, but I also epoxied them onto the lid at the first application of epoxy to either the lid or the hook to try to get a good chemical bond from the epoxy that penetrated the wood in the hook to that that penetrated the hatch. I also put a little fillet of thickened epoxy around the periphery of the hook. They've stayed on so far (and made it through the hot SSTIKS weekend intact).

-John D.

: It was over 100 degrees the day before yesterday. I had my yak on my car rack
: all day. When I was moving the kayak into the garage I noticed that I had
: a little water in the bow and stern compartments. To my horror 3 out of 4
: hooks had delaminated!! This is not the first time that I have had hatch
: hooks release! I am getting ready to just bolt stainlis steal hooks
: through the hacthes!

: Sage