Hatching a Plan

I've been working very long hours away from the boat for most of the summer, however I did grab a day at home, on a day that wasn't raining during the summer which meant that I could tackle one of our drippy problems.
Whenever it rained, water would drip into the boat up by the entry hatch. (it also dripped through the main skylights but that's for another day).
On closer inspection, the issue was where a wooden step section met the metal of the deck locker. I'm sure there must be ways of making wood and metal happy together but when it comes to them being happy AND waterproof it was just easier to scrap the wood bit altogether and replace it with metal.

The original wooden step is painted blue in the picture below.









Steve pulled it out with the help of a crowbar.


You can see the gap we then needed to fill with metal plate.


From one of the pieces of metal that we cut out of the front deck, Steve cut the piece I needed to fill the gap.



Because of the way that the doors sit against the ledge, we decided to add a section of angle iron to the top edge of the metal polygon, so that, should the rain run down the hatch doors and drip off the bottom, it will be collected on the angle 'step' and run outside instead of inside.


I welded the new metal wedge in place, and then welded the angle 'step' on top.


My favourite epoxy filler was used to double the waterproofness, then ground down to a smooth flat, neat finish.


Due to the rubbishness of the old wood/metal combo, we found that a patch of the hatch further down had rotten through. Steve cut the rusty bit out and I welded a new piece of metal into place.




Once this was all painted it looked so much neater than the old wooden contraption.