Hatches mounted

Installing these hatches was fun.   Sourcing down the right screws in the necessary lengths and materials was a larger time-consumer than expected.   And you would think that accurately marking and drilling a bunch of tiny holes would be easy, but not for me - at least one hole always seems to get moved slightly in the middle of the night.  

Rear cabin hatch hole ready to go:

Sealant applied around lower channel of hatch frame:

I got reasonable squeeze-out but would have liked a bit more (sorry no picture) - so I increased the amount for the hatch below.

Rear cabin hatch done:

Prep done, and parts and materials staged for forward cabin hatch install:

These are Lewmar hatches, not sure where they are made but the installation instructions call for metric M5 and M6 screws.    Wasn't going to do that - I don't want a mix of imperial\metric fasteners on my boat (before anyone asks, yes I'm a supporter of the metric system).   I substituted #10 and #12 machine screws (in stainless steel) instead, with washers and nylock nuts.

Sealant spread (yummy, looks like frosting):

Oh yes, I am using 3M 4000UV for a sealant.   4200 would work but seems like overkill based on the further reading I have been doing.

Better squeeze-out this time:

I swirled a little sealant around each (counter-sunk) screw depression before inserting each screw for the last time.   And I haven't looked inside the boat yet but it is is hard to do this job without pushing a bunch of sealant through the screw hole.

Cleaned up and done:

Like any boat builder I have bazillions of popsicle sticks laying around.   I found they work better for scooping up excess sealant next to the hatch, if you first cut them off to a square tip.

One trick I found while researching is to use a screw drill gun to do the initial tightening, but set the torque setting to very low (#1, ie the lowest) so you are just barely drawing the screws tight.   Later after the sealant has cured, you can go back and tighten all of the screws to torque setting #2 or #3, thus compressing the sealant just a little bit to ensure a leak-proof install.    Also, using the automatic torque setting helps ensure that you don't wrack the frame by over-tightening one of the sides.

I will have to remember to do a garden hose leak test on all of the hatches later on (rather than just trusting to luck that the job was good enough - although I certainly hope it was!).