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Old Bombay II - Opening ports
One of the nicest things about the 250 is the aft berth. It is large and surprisingly comfortable, but it is dark and on a hot night, airless. I decided to add two opening ports in the aft berth area. I checked with Catalina to make sure I wasn’t screwing up anything structurally and started work.
After carefully measuring I took a saber saw to my new boat ... really scary .... and cut the openings for the ports. There is an outer and inner shell of about 1/8” fiberglass that makes up the cockpit and the interior shell. It is easy to cut. Between the shells is a space of between 1/4” and 1/2”.
The hatch (port) unit slides through from the inside and then there is a outer ring that bolts it down. So that I had something to bolt against, I put 3/8 strips of teak on all four sides of the port and drilled the 10 bolt holes through the fiberglass, teak, fiberglass and outer ring.
Then it was just a case of putting on plenty of 3M sealer and bolting everything together.
The port I used had a large 2” rain lip that extended in the cockpit, so I used a saber saw and cut it down to about 3/4” I put caps on the bolt ends to protect legs, sanded everything smooth and painted the bolts white.
The ports work great and after two years have not leaked at all. The only problem is that when we are sleeping in the aft berth, the sun comes in and wakes us to early. Vicki (my wife and boat’s admiral) is going to get around to making curtains some day.
This tip submitted by Mike Shetter, send comments to him at mshetter@ix.netcom.com