Batten Down the Hatches

A lot of narrowboats have side hatches that provide light, ventilation, and emergency exits, and we're no different. What is different is that we have, until recently, had nothing stopping anyone from opening them from the outside and having a good snoop around. Obviously this isn't so good for security, and on one occasion we have had a hatch door blow open in the wind and let the rain, but fortunately nothing has been stolen and despite Luke's fears the worst that happened was some timber got a bit wet.

We decided it was finally time to address this issue and figure out a way to secure the hatches. The solution we decided upon is incredibly simple, reasonably cheap, and we think looks really good. Brass pipe fittings (munsen rings) were recessed into the lining either side of the hatch and fixed using a short length of threaded bar with a nut and washer on the back face of the lining. These would allow our "bolt" to slide into on either side of the doors.

The bolt ready to slide into place.

Further munsen rings were mounted on the hatch doors using the normal back plates that would be used when mounting pipe onto a wall. Because the lining on the inside of the hatch doors is not flush with the inside of the lining on the cabin sides, we needed to push out the munsen rings further into the cabin to bring them in line with the ones mounted into the lining next to the doors. To achieve this we simply unscrewed the back plate slightly until the rings were aligned.

One secure hatch! Note spare munsen ring for bolt to slide into.

So that's our bolt holders sorted, now for the bolt. As we're using pipe fittings it seems sensible to use pipe! We had some old 22mm copper pipe that we saved when we pulled out all of the old interior, so we just had to cut it to length using a pipe cutter and slide it into place.

A final munsen ring was set into the lining to accommodate the "bolt" when the hatches are open and we're almost done. Finally we padded out the pipe clips by putting a couple of M4 washers between the two parts of the clip so that the pipe could slide freely through the munsen rings without being gripped by the pipe clips.

All that remains now is to plug the ends of the pipe with some wooden dowel that'll be shaped to fit snugly into the end of the pipe and replace the screws we used with brass screws. Hopefully a job that'll be finished this weekend and Luke can finally sleep easy knowing our boat is secure!.