Remember that old VW Bug ad...

[JeffM]

...the one that ran in magazines with a photo of the car floating in a lake? The caption had a little asterisk, which led to the fine print at the bottom, something like, "The Volkswagen Beetle definitely floats, but not indefinitely." After all the rain we've had in the last day-and-a-half, I might make that part of my forum "signature."

Went out to the driveway, sponge in hand, to dry out the lockers. Opened up my new fancy-dandy So-Pac hatches and discovered the sponge would be inadequate: I ended up siphoning 14 gallons of rain water from my 4 seat lockers. Mind you, all of them had been latched. To be fair, the forepeak locker had only a cup or so. The hatches had not shown any leakage while underway (not a fair test, since fair weather and moderate winds), nor had they taken on much water when I had hosed the boat a few days ago. In fact the forepeak locker still had dry construction dust all over it until this rain.

I've yet to properly leak-test the lockers, but my sense is the water is coming in under the gaskets rather than under frames not well caulked. It may be that my seats are not entirely flat, leading to slightly warped frames. Even so, all four leaked, and the amount of water in those lockers was staggering!

[Howard]

Do the lockers have curbs and gutters or are the panels simply resting flat on a frame (with gasket sealer)?

[JeffM]

No curbs and gutters; hatches stand about 1/4" tall above the surface. Hatch has an edge on frame fitting into a channel on underside of hatch that has a soft molded-in gasket. I expect water sitting in groove between hatch and frame is coming in under the gasket.

[JeffM]

Finally got around to a little testing--precipitated by flooding of lockers during a capsize test of CS20 #65 Beatrice Ann. In a nutshell, there appear to be places where water can get around the hatch frame (so inadequate caulking on my part), but since even a locker that was fully caulked ALSO leaked badly, I decided to test the gasket seals of the two seat lockers that flooded most recently.

I used a wash-off marker (meant for making overhead transparencies) and ran it around the frame edge that is supposed to seat against the gasket in the hatch. Then I closed and latched the hatch, careful not to push the hatch harder than necessary for latching. On re-opening the hatch I looked at the gasket for marker ink transfer. On both hatches there were long stretches with no ink--so the gasket did not meet the frame edges there. On one hatch, the hatch seated on three sides, leaving the entire hinge edge unmarked, on the other hatch, only the corners and the latch edge seated properly! I expect similar results from at least three other hatches.

I am not pleased with my pricey So-Pac hatches: I really counted on both dry storage, and the security of water-tight floatation compartments.