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!