Another small victory has been won towards the restoration of my Pearson 28-1 in the form of a clean, functional and shiny forward hatch.
The forward hatches on many Pearson sailboats are layed up without gelcoat on the top and bottom surfaces to allow some light to pass into the boats cabin. Since the polyester resin that is used to lay up the hatch isn’t UV resistant the polyester erodes leaving a dried out looking hatch with fiberglass strands exposed. I considered cutting this section out for replacement with a sheet Lexan but I decided I didn’t want to spend the extra time on this just to have a scratched up forward hatch after a few months of use. I may still make this change in the future but for now I have kept the hatch in it’s stock setup.
Restoration of the hatch included replacing most of the hardware, fixing the most of the fasteners which were stripped and loose, and adding a coat of polyester to the top and bottom of the hatch. The results look great and now that it is warming up I’m glad to be able to open up the forward hatch to catch the breeze. I still need to add a screen to the hatch, and I may need to beef up the seal in the future but for now the hatch is done.
