Webster's sense of humor

hatch ¹  (hach)

n.

1.

a. An opening, as in the deck of a ship, in the roof or floor of a building, or in an aircraft.

b. The cover for such an opening.

c. A hatchway.

d. Nautical A ship's compartment.

2. The hinged rear door of a hatchback.

3. A floodgate.

Idiom:

down the hatch Slang

Drink up. Often used as a toast.

The weekend was spent rebedding several of the hatches on Kintala.  The V-berth hatch and the one in the main salon have been leaking since we bought the boat and despite repeated attempts to correct the issue by resealing the exterior handles and putting in new gasket material, it continued to rain inside every time it rained outside.  Tim worked the 2 larger hatches while I tackled the one aft of the helm seat, a kind of odd place to put a Bomar hatch that locks from the inside when there is no way to access the inside unless you're a child of 3 or a midget, threaded carefully through the lazarette and around the cockpit floor to the stern.  It once provided access for a remote VHF radio station, but due to the fact that one of the hinge pins was broken and there was no way to lock it, water did what water does and completely totaled the VHF.  As Webster says above, a hatch is a floodgate.  So we removed the useless remote VHF and I located a square plastic storage box that fit exactly in the same place, just large enough to stow our handheld VHF and a couple snacks for the watch person and installed it with the help of several mounting blocks.  Of course removing the broken hinge pin took half a day as it was a stainless roll pin now thoroughly embedded in corroded aluminum, followed by a trip to locate replacements and my project carried over into the second day.  Tim's job wasn't any easier, each hatch taking a full day to remove and clean up, the aluminum frames being as corroded as mine was.  After two days of this we were fully prepared to take Webster's final piece of definition "Down the hatch...Drink up" at his word and enjoyed the company of The Assembled at the marina for dinner and various alcoholic concoctions.  The weather man is calling for pretty much steady rain over the next 24 hours so we'll have plenty of time to see if our efforts have yielded a dry(er) boat.