If you are a new Seamless Sailor and want to start with a fairly easy project, I’d suggest hatch covers.

These are straight forward and several of the books I’ve listed on the Books page of the blog have instructions.   I’ve seen many different styles, some with fancy top-stitching or cut outs for hinges for example.  But really you can make  simple hatch covers that will serve the purpose of protecting your very valuable hatch lenses.  We seem to loose one or two a season during a big storm.  I’ve started cutting out an extra one when I’m remaking one so I have a jump on the next one.

On a recent repair of a 20 x 20 hatch cover, I picked out the old rotting stitches.  I used my Engel hot knife (love) to seal the edges which were really raveling.  I’m guessing the previous owner of our boat made this one and might have taken some short cuts.  I double checked the seams holding the 2″ sides to the top and added a row of stitching (semi-flat felled the seams to strengthen and finish) and sewed back in the casing for the shock cord.  The shock cord will be put through the casing by attaching a small safety pin to help lead it through.  We’ll finish it we take it back once aboard by clamping on two hog rings to the 1/4″ shock cord (just overlapped about an inch) so that it is  just tight enough to hold around the bottom edge of the hatch.  Time involved about 2.5 hours.  I’ll try to time how long it takes me to make the new ones and compare!

Good instructions for hatch covers:

— Troubadour – Linda has a very good set of instructional pictures.

— Sailrite – has a video

— Julie Gifford’s book has several options

— Lisa Carr’s book has good details

Do you have other suggestions for hatch cover instructions?