Published in MARINE TRAWLER OWNERS ASSOCIATION  magazine

Whether or not you have teak decks your lazarette hatch cover will eventually leak. The leak will not necessarily be  into the lazarette but into the cover itself. Can you spell rot! CCRIDER is a 1981 CHB 45 P/H with teak decks. Well, all the decks used to be teak but a few years ago they were covered with, what is commonly referred to as "pickup truck bedliner " material. Best thing that has happened to teak decks! 

I digress. Anyway, I thought my leaks were gone.  I had not counted on the small flush finger handle with which you open the lazarette  hatch. Seems as though water was making its way into the hatch cover through one of them. I discovered this when the fitting came off  in my hand!! This on the day we left on a 3,000mile trip up the Tenn-Tom and Tennessee Rivers. I had repaired the cover about 5 years ago and Fiberglassed the under side. This made the leak non- apparent. The glass contained it  and held the water inside the cover. Thus the plywood core rotted. Since the cockpit teak is protected from direct weather it was not  covered with the  " bedliner " material.

THE BIG FIX

I cutoff the fiberglass back  with a circular saw set at a depth to go through the glass and the 1/2 inch plywood backing. It came off in large rotten pieces neatly leaving the teak planks in place.

The next step was to sand the rough places on the underside of the exposed teak. . The original builder used an adhesive to hold the teak to the plywood underlayment which need NOT be smooth, just get most of the last ply of the bad plywood off. For this I used a DeWalt grinder with 60 grit paper Of course I had two nice holes in the teak where the finger handles had been! These holes were all the way through the teak so I squared them and fitted patches from some scrap teak. These were carefully fitted leaving a small space all around for black caulking. These were set aside until the new backing was installed.

In the next step I cut a piece of 1/2 inch TREATED plywood to fit. This was glued and screwed to the teak, from the underside of course.  I then sealed the edges of the plywood where it met the lip on the underside of the hatch cover. 

At this time the two teak patches were installed.  They are held in place with several screws driven from the bottom into them.
I paid PARTICULR attention to sealing the entire hole into which they were to be set. That is caulking coated the hole bottom and sides and allowed to dry. THEN I spread more caulking and installed the patch.

Since the patched holes where the finger pulls had been were only slightly larger than the pulls I used a plunge router to cut new holes for them a few inches to one side of the original placement. Note that I did not use screws this time but through bolted them so that there would be no chance of a leak.  There, anyway!!!!!