Shattered Main Hatch

[Tony Treen]

Wadudu came out of the water last Wednesday. Was on the boat this morning doing odd maintenance on the deck forrard. Standing up, I stepped backwards onto the closed perspex main hatch, cracking sound, and suddenly the hatch disintegrated. I half fell into the cabin, one leg down the companionway, one leg on still on deck, and then fell backwards into the cockpit. Ended up on my back on the cockpit sole with feet in the air. Necessitated a visit to the local Minor Injuries Unit, and now have seven stitches in one forearm gash, and Steristrips over two others. Not sure if these were caused by the edge of the hatchway, or possible broken perspex still on the hatch slides as I fell (all the bits of the hatch were in the saloon when I regained my feet).

Questions:
- I have always stood on all the hatches, considering the thickness of the perspex to be more than adequate to take my weight. Have I been wrong, and one should not stand on the hatches?
- Has this happened to anyone else? Have searched the forum and can find no other post on this subject.
- Does the perspex become brittle with age, exposure to sunlight etc? Wadudu is a 2012 build, if it does become brittle, how long does this take?

At least it happened ashore, and not out on the water, and when I cannot get back to the mooring until the flood tide.

[Justin Greig]

hope you are not incapacitated too long Tony - and appreciate your post as a caution to those of us with older boats!

[Chris Wicks]

We have always stood on the main lewmar hatch forward of the mast, I think you are referring to the companion way hatch, with one fixed panel and a sliding panel? I have always avoided standing on this and specifically brief crew not to stand on these companionway hatches. We removed the fixed perspex panel on 'Dipper' earlier this year as it needed resealing.....

Hope you recover....

Cheers

Chris

[Dennis]

Hello Tony

I hope you are OK.

Re the hatches. Like Chris I have always been happy about standing on the forward escape hatch (The Lewmar one). However, I have never put my weight on the companionway sliding hatch as I did not think it would be strong enough.

When I was being shown around the 2008 Southampton exhibit by Bob Brown, he was proudly showing me all of the "improvements" he had made to the original SA built boats. One of the "improvements" was the sliding hatch. He told me that he had wanted to make it from toughened glass, but had been unable to source this. He therefore had opted to use "Lexan" which is I believe polycarbonate. I understand he chose "Lexan" because it was stronger than "Perspex" which is of course acrylic. Possibly worth bearing in mind when you are replacing the broken one.

[Tony Treen]

Justin, Chris, and Dennis, thanks for your good wishes. I am fine, the arm only hurts when I knock it! Big problem is that am on antibiotics which preclude alcohol consumption... And on further reflection, came off fairly lightly after falling backwards from standing on the cabin roof and ending up on my back on the cockpit sole. Could have been a lot worse.

A salutary lesson for me, and a warning to other owners who also stand on the two hatches aft of the mast.