Hatch Slides

How to Make Your Hatch Slide Easily without messy Grease

This solution came up early last year on the Westerly Yahoo Discussion Group and it really works.

First buy some Teflon coated self adhesive fibre glass tape available on the web. Make the tape a little narrower than your hatch channel because you have to slide it into the channel in sticky side down.

Remove your hatch and clean off all the old black grease both off the hatch slide and the hill mounted part. This can take a while and ideally requires removal of the hatch garage however with perseverance it is possible to clean the whole length of both slide with the hatch garage in situ.

Cut the tape to length and fix four pieces two on the hatch and two on the mating slides. Once the hatch is in place it will hold the tape down and the end

You will be amazed with the result. The hatch can be slid back with one finger with a swooshing sound like the doors on the star-ship enterprise. In fact you may want to introduce a variable friction device to make it less easy for the hatch to slide whilst sailing. Ideas for this welcomed!

And the big benefit is that there is no messy black grease residue to get on peoples hands or clothes.

Thanks to Ken for the pictures.