Lewmar Opening Port Gasket Questions

Sidnewport

Member II
Does anyone know how to replace or renew the gaskets on the lewmar openable ports? Or should I just apply sealer and forget opening them?
 

Out There

1988 E35-3 on Lake Erie
Depends on what you have, mine were too old to get replacement parts and replaced them with new
 

Loren Beach

O34 - Portland, OR
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
This is an often-sought repair, and referenced on this site and on many other sailing sites and also some U-Tube videos. Lewmar sold a Lot of those to a Lot of boat builders in the 80's and 90's. (!)
Just one... Prior thread: https://ericsonyachts.org/ie/threads/gasket-for-lewmar-opening-portlite-old-standard.21797/

If you search here, or on the WWW, with something like Lewmar opening port gasket replacement, you should get a lot of material to mull over. :geek:

I have a friend that replaced all these Lewmar proprietory gaskets in his E-38-200, and he still cringes at the mention of the job. He also replaced all of the old lenses that had become crazed. Looks great several years later, I should note. I chickened out and upgraded to the new-design Lewmar opening ports during our re-fit in 2021.

BTW, I will alter the thread title to make searching and indexing productive. Great question and the shared knowledge will help many other owners of 80's Ericson-built vessels.

Regards,
Loren
 
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Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author

bigd14

Sustaining Partner
Blogs Author
I looked into this and ultimately decided I didn’t want to waste time chasing solutions that may or may not work so ended up replacing 5 of them (2 were already replaced by a PO and were not leaking). All 5 needed removal and rebedding anyway. So a boat buck+ later and they are all done. I also replaced the seals in the three overhead hatches and rebedded them. Now on to rebedding stanchions and deck hardware when the weather reliably dries out.

And at risk of reigniting the bedding compound debate, I used butyl tape. :)
 

HerbertFriedman

Sustaining Member
I have a small Lewmar opening portlite that was leaking. The gasket is not a simple circular cross section but one with a rectangular tab that fits in a groove. I contacted several suppliers but finally found a supplier in the UK who said the had the replacement gasket. No luck, the gasket did have the rectangular tab but was way too thick to allow the window to close. I finally used a standard gasket with a circular cross section (and no tab) and cemented it in using 3M4200. No leaks. BTW, Lewmar suggested to replace the portlite entirely at a high cost, I declined.
 

Chemainus

Junior Member
It may be worth looking at 3D printing in some of the newly available flexible materials. I’m doing more and more odd replacement parts that way now and in many cases it’s cheap fast and effective. I’m just starting to experiment with gaskets
 

ky ed

Extreme Adventurer. E27 trailer sailor from Iowa
I have found gasket material that worked from west marine.
 
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