: Hi Mike,

: With all these hatches the deck has to be completely flat or it's
: impossible to get a seal, the base ring will bend a bit to
: compensate for any curvature in the deck but the hatch cover
: won't bend, so they leak.

: Bill H.

You are absolutely correct, and that is my issue. My deck is designed to be flat where I have it mounted but I have about 1/16" of camber (1/32 on either side of the centerline), which is enough to keep it from sealing correctly. It was flat before I joined hull and deck, but I picked up the camber when fitting the two but since I was already fiberglassed I didn't want to tear into it to flatten it again. I have tried everything I can at this point because I have a batten to reinforce the flat deck just aft of the hatch that I would have to cut through or otherwise modify and I have been reluctant to do that. But- I'm sick of working around the leaking and worrying about it. I paddled some rough water this weekend and could feel the tail start dragging after a couple of hours because I had collected a bunch of water in there. Doesn't handle so good any more, especially in quartering astern with no skeg. I can't move the stern around quickly enough. Luckily there was a planned stop at a beach where I could bail and I wasn't on the cliff side of the island with no place to take out.

I am going to make a sheet of laminated CF and glass on a dead-flat surface so that it's as thin as possible and set it up in the hull. I have a bulkhead hatch like the Betsy Bays, so it won't be difficult to add it to the underside of the hull as a retrofit. I use, or had intended to use, the Beckson with a ditty bag ring as a day hatch, but if I can determine that Beckson can be laid out flat again to get a good seal once I remount it I'm worried that the mounting ring for the screw-in will protrude too far into the hull with such a low deck, so I have to decide if I want to go with the same concept and loose space when I don't really intend to carry much in there anyway, or go with something slimmer in case I opt to put a tent in there or something. As it is, I already loose space in the ditty bag because the hull is shallow. I have a Southco Marine compression latch holding my front hatch closed, and it is quite convenient to have the handle to pull the hatch out with, which is, I think, a better design than the pry-out Beckson. (I'm on my fourth version of a gasket for that one and I'm absolutely water-tight, and we'll see how it goes with durability...

That is the full story.

m