A year and a half ago my brother lost his sliding companionway hatch from his sailboat during a hurricane. At last, we're looking at making a replacement for it. A little research showed it was a fairly simple affair, essentially a ']' shaped fiberglass section about 36" long with some simple wooden cutouts to key into the hatch slides. The only pictures I could find of a Shark 24's hatch were on pages 4 & 5 of this PDF:<br />Shark resoration photos, click here (1.2MB). <br />The original cover was a little flimsy - it would buckle if you put your weight on it, but it would bounce back to shape.<br /><br />Principally, what I would like to know is what is the best way to go about building a new one. The way I see it, I could build a mould and lay it up like the factory doubtless did. Or I could construct a flimsy core and lay a few layers of woven roving over it to make it strong and durable, then smooth and sand and I suppose paint it.<br /><br />I'm thinking of sticking with epoxy for this since it's a relatively small part so there's really no significant cost advantage with poly. I've only done a little fiberglass work in the past so I'm hoping this will be a learning experiance. In that vein if one of those two methods would be more time-consuming but also more educational, I would prefer to go with the more interesting route.<br /><br />Thanks for your advice!
<br />Before going out to measure up the boat this year, I had imagined something like that - then I gave up on it. There is a stop at the end of the travel that goes across between the two sliders. That would interfere with anything that dropped down from the original hatch underside as you slid it forward. It also stops rainwater and spray from coming into the cockpit from forward. You can see it in this photo I took:<br />
