FORWARD HATCH LEAK

Are you sure it's a Lewmar? My leaky forward hatch over the V-berth was a Bomar. The repair was a long story, but what eventually cured things was completely removing the hatch and rebedding it using the special saturated foam tape recommended by Bomar and available from the Bomar website. Before that I tried rebedding it with 3M 101 bedding compound. That didn't work, I think because the hatch is not a very good fit to the deck cutout and the gaps that needed to be

sealed were just too big in places to get the 101 to fill everything in adequately. My leaks were in the same place you describe (i.e. near the hinges) where the fit between the hatch and the deck cutout was especially poor.

Scott Thompson

Surprise, 653