Retired from newspapers and television, currently sailing Thelonious II, a 1984 Ericson 381.
Reversing the main hatch (factory installation Lewmar "Superhatch" shown above) is a popular modification to avoid conflict with the boom vang.
Getting the frame unseated took a while, using gentle prying with putty knives and screwdrivers. The bedding was a white compound, probably the same the factory used on the port lights. The product in the picture, Motsenbocker Lift-off, which claims to break the molecular bond of certain adhesives, has worked well for me in the past but didn’t do much in this case.
The hinge components require larger screws to pass through both hinge and frame before entering the cabin top. They're husky and stainless steel, and they resisted extraction. With some forboding I diagnosed aluminum-stainless corrosion bonding. Nope. Patience, Corrosion-X and half an hour of light tap-tap-tapping with a hammer broke the bond (an impact wrench is better). It was not aluminum-stainless bonding after all, but the grip on the screw threads of the white bedding compound.
Those four holes in the frame were the only ones of 24 not to exactly mate with the holes in the deck after reversal. How cool is that? I filled the non-aligned four with polyester resin, then put the hatch in place and drilled the new ones. The frame was bedded in a single strip of butyl rubber, with a wrapping of butyl string around each screw head.
A two-hour project if things go well, and in fact there's little to go wrong. But this is one of those jobs where the water-shedding profile of cabin house and deck means there is no level place to put your foot, butt, razor blade, hammer or martini. And although it was pleasant day and an easy job, I did mutter some colorful words, proving again that I have not improved the hygiene of my personal speech nearly as much as Ben Franklin recommended.
The reversed hatch has no issues (and a new lens). No idea why the factory didn't orient it this way to begin with. Vang aside, the old hatch caught spray going to windward. And headed downwind, this one is better at capturing whatever apparent wind there is.
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