Another Boat Sunk In A Lock

[Sea Dog]

Chalice had a weed hatch cover that was literally a piece of oblong 6mm steel plate, with no additions.

 

It was held down by one locking bar with a screw thread that bore down on the middle of said cover plate.

 

If you had forgotten to replace and tighten the locking bar then I don't think the hatch would have stayed in situ very long at all.

That's exactly how mine is. Without the bar it certainly wouldn't stay in place, but that's why it has a bar.

 

There are some things on a boat that need checking regularly, and watertight integrity is very definitely one of them! If the hatch lid is removed, put it back correctly, check it, check you checked it right, then soon after sailing check it again, then when you stop check it again, then check it before you set off again. That should about cover it, but check it again if you're unsure. If you change the seal it may well loosen as the new seal beds in, so check it a bit more often! Check for water ingress around it as part of post sailing checks and as part of pre sailing checks so if a weep is developing you'll spot it early - this is just another occasion when clean and dry bilges are your friend.

[Paul C]

I make the habit of occasionally flicking on the bilge pump manually, while taking a look at the outlet. Normally there's nothing coming out, if any water comes out it warrants a bit of investigation.

[magnetman]

I do that too rather than have an auto bilge pump

 

An auto might be OK on a boat left unattended but as I am always on mine it seems better to have a manual pump and observe what heppens when it is switched on.

[Scholar Gypsy]

One other thought - I have the bilge pump sitting in a box that is placed to catch water coming through the stern tube.

 

So a quick daily blip of the switch tells me how much water is coming through the stern tube. If there is any water in the rest of the bilges then I need to fret about where it has come from - leaking weedhatch, blocked drains around the hatch in the stern deck etc etc..

[Horace42]

 

Quite right Mike

 

I think a meteor struck and made a hole in the hull

 

or they ran over a discarded WW1 mine

 

or someone had dropped a six foot metal spike into the lock that speared the hull

 

or the weedhatch instantaneously moved somewhere else in accordance with quantum physics

 

All these theories are adequately covered by the facts that we know

 

Richard

Another explanation that fits the basic facts, unknown to the owners, it was an 'accident' staged by vandals - filmed for an entry to 'You've Been Framed'

[mayalld]

I'v only seen the type which had a top plate and two vertical plates dropping down to another horizontal plate which is in line with the counter. I've not looked carefully at a great number of narrow boats out of water or with weed hatch out to be fair. A single plate weed hatch as described does seem to be a bad design to me.

 

Whilst the design that you describe is very common, the legs and lower plate aren't there to make it less likely that a badly secured hatch will come off (although they do have that effect). They are actually there to prevent cavitation, and it turns out that they bring an entirely incidental improvement to the security of the hatch.