Re: P19 workmanship. :-( argh.

Thomas Grimes (tgrimes@gw.bsu.edu)
Thu, 25 Mar 1999 17:14:25 -0500


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Rich

I think that you have the right idea for a replacement hatch--vertical end strips on the sides/ends of the hatch so that the end grain of the plywood won't show (or get water into the plies). I wish that I had thought of that when I replaced my vertical hatch.

I had never seen a P-14 or 15 when I bought my Potter and I had to do a great deal of work on it right away, to make it sail, so I pretty much refit everything as it was.

For some reason my boat had a vertical hatch of 3/4" plywood, so that's what I replaced it with. The end grain is very visible! In order to make it fit more closely to the after end of the sliding hatch I cut a piece off of the vertical hatch and hinged it so that it will fold forward when the sliding hatch is slid as far aft as it comes. Then it can be folded back to the vertical position, in front of the after edge of the sliding hatch.

I cut the top piece of the vertical hatch a bit long, so that the hinging top piece overlaps the front of the after edge of the sliding hatch. I made the cut between the main part of the folding piece of the vertical hatch and the top piece at a 45 degree angle (slanting downward towards the cockpit when the hatch is in the vertical position) so that rain would have less tendency to blow in. The 3/4" plywood that I used to make the hatch is too thick to fit in front of the edge of the sliding hatch, so I routed the edge of the plywood for clearance. Had I used the correct thickness of plywood, the routing would not have been necessary.

Regards

Tom Grimes
P-14 #363 Far Horizon
Muncie, Indiana