day hatches

can anyone say why they exist? Honestly for the life of me I can’t see a functional reason for them. Why are they mounted on the side and not in the center?

My theory is that British boats had deck molds for aft deck pumps. If the pump is optional the hole is still there so why not make it a hatch?

Anyone have some original stories on their derivation?

i wouldn’t have a boat without one.

– Last Updated: Feb-22-04 5:58 AM EST –

for me at least, they're very useful. why are they off to the side? so you can turn and reach into it. imagine trying to turn around far enough to be able to get at a hatch located in the center of the boat? i don't know about you, but i don't have THAT much flexibility.

there are inumerable items that you might want to get to during a trip, without wanting to pull into shore to obtain. clothing layers for changeable weather. say it's raining and cool enough such that you start off paddling with a long sleeve paddling jacket. then it stops raining and becomes too warm for your paddle jacket. solution? take it off and stow it in the day hatch.

or the reverse, it starts out warm but blows up a cold rain mid-way to somewhere. solution? pull that paddle jacket outta the day hatch and wear it.

i can think of lots of other items that make a day hatch a must have but you get the idea.

if your response is going to be, "why not just pull into shore and get what you need out of the primary hatch" ... there are numerous trips i go on where "pulling into shore" is not practical. open crossing for example, or rocky shoreline where no reasonable landing site is available.

You’re Kidding, Right?
Trolling?



Love my day hatch and use it all the time. I won’t ever be without… unless I purchase some sort of pure speed boat.



Liv2! Was that weather yesterday not fantastic?



JackL! You out there? I’m on cup #2 and fixin’ to bike with my crazy early morning buddies.

All Kayaks
all kayaks should have day hatches I hate putting things on deck.

Kudzu!
check out the time! 0425 West coast time! I’m on Eastern time already and haven’t even left yet! Off to NC this morn, paddlin’ (with a day hatch!) on Thursday.



Come on Lee. Are you bored? Day hatches ROCK!



steve

come on guys
coffee cup holders rock. Original applications, where’d they come from,not because that’s what the Brit boats have. The only way that getting into that stuffed aft hatch quickly is with someone else opening and closing it. And even with my fat gut I’m flexible and can turn my shoulders in line with the kayak. Agreed that putting stuff on the deck isn’t a good idea,so what do you need that can’t be placed on your pfd, under the foredeck, attached to the skirt, in a belt pack, or secured to the floor of the kayak between your legs/under the front of the seat? Basically anything I need should be quickly accessible, I can grab a small drybox or drybag secured by bungies/fastek buckle on the floor and have it out in a couple seconds with the sprayskirt back on. What can you get that’s that big out of a day hatch? If it’s not safe to pop your sprayskirt for a few seconds it sure as all heck isn’t safe to open a day hatch or have a friend descend on top/below me to open/close the day hatch or do it myself.

It’s only a partial troll,I’ve always wondered.

trade-offs
they are all trade-offs. Personally I don’t want that much ‘stuff’ hanging off’n me PFD, belt pack or on my boat sole. Under the deck bags rock.



When you get used to a DH, and the packing scheme that goes with it, they work well for holding ALOT of stuff that is ‘relatively’ accessable. PERIOD.



steve

Essential
I would not have a boat without one.



In my day hatch is my first aid kit, paddle jacket, lights, snacks, fluid…



I am particularly grateful for them usually being on the right side of the boat as I am left handed and I can keep my control hand on the paddle while accessing the day hatch.

First aid kit#1
Clean deck except for paddle and or pump secured wiht a fastex buckle #2. Accessability of extra water (I am wearing a camelback but there are sometimes friends) ( and bungies on the deck are for paddling ponds which I do some times)#3. place for the vhf(in a bag) when I am in a group and too many people have theirs out and on #4. A place to keep and extra layer, (I like a huge cheap rainjacket, got a cold buddy or aelf, toss it over pfd and all and get out asap, (thanks LIz N.)) #5. and others flares lots of extra food, thermos full of ginger tea, sunscreen, etc etc. On a day trip I never open a main hatch unless something unusual is happening.



IN short a way to have secure, somewhat dry, and safely accessable stuff on the ocean. If you day hatch gets flooded you boat will still be able to make headway with some control. Hard to do if a main hatch is flooded.



Why offset? Nigel Foster offsets to left so the right hnd can hold the paddle in control position for instant use. Center is hard to twist to reach. some prefer right offset so that the right hand can rummage.



The heads of a famous kayak cult will not make boats with day hatches as a rule, they say if you can get to the hatch you can get to the cockpit. What about keeping the cockpit free from items, and the difficulty of getting an item from the bottom of a knee tube? What about a commodious compartment that a friend can open in an emergency? Also the skilled can do a one handed sculling for support brace and lean hard right and pop left to make a quick grab for an important item.



Tether that day hatch cover!

Welcome to NC
Yesterday was really warm but very windy. The snow is all melted and I managed to get all the salt washed off my truck.



Hope you have a great time on your visit.

Other variations
Saw a day hatch that was mounted front and center of the cockpit that accessed an under the deck compartment.

ok,haven’t been in the water in awhile
but let’s go through the list:


  1. Clean deck except for paddle and or pump secured wiht a fastex buckle. I agree 100%,except I’d put the pump inside the cockpit under the foredeck.


  2. Accessability of extra water : imagine placing “extra” water low and central to your body mass, ie. 2liters right at the bottom of the kayak between your feet. Unless you’re using a line like Joe Greenleys boats with a huge sucker hose that’s mighty accessible.


  3. place for the vhf(in a bag) when I am in a group and too many people have theirs out and on. Ok,so you need an emergency item accesible but not on your person. Under the foredeck is pretty accesible.


  4. A place to keep and extra layer, (I like a huge cheap rainjacket, got a cold buddy or aelf, toss it over pfd and all and get out asap, (thanks LIz N.)) Ok,ASAP to me means ASAP. jackets are stowable enough to put behind backband under skirt. Much quicker and safer access than day hatch with spare paddle on it.



    #5. and others flares lots of extra food, thermos full of ginger tea, sunscreen, etc etc. . If you need flares they should be on you. If they’re spare or part of a ditch bag then that should be accesible in a ditch scenario.









    On a day trip I never open a main hatch unless something unusual is happening. Agreed.



    IN short a way to have secure, somewhat dry, and safely accessable stuff on the ocean. If you day hatch gets flooded you boat will still be able to make headway with some control. Hard to do if a main hatch is flooded.



    THAT’s what I’m talking about secure, accesible. If it has to be dry then it’s in a dry container, if it has to be accessible then it’s on my or reachable from the cockpit. There’s no way in hell I can twist around in rough water to remove something that went from being “nice to have” to “I NEED IT NOW”.









    The heads of a famous kayak cult will not make boats with day hatches as a rule, they say if you can get to the hatch you can get to the cockpit. What about keeping the cockpit free from items, and the difficulty of getting an item from the bottom of a knee tube? What about a commodious compartment that a friend can open in an emergency? Also the skilled can do a one handed sculling for support brace and lean hard right and pop left to make a quick grab for an important item.



    Tether that day hatch cover!



    No kidding on the tethers,and one that won’t complicate putting the hatch back on. Regarding keeping the cockpit free of items,sure,keep it free of loose items but for the amount of energy that goes into making deck rigging ornate and busy very few manufacturers do anything with the interior of the cockpit. Most folks are not paddling very low volume boats so there’s a lot of accesible space in the cockpit that a few bungies and fastek buckles can secure things. You can determine what will cause entrapment or not by doing rescues and seeing what’s real. I bet no one thought sealine footbraces could knock out of position when they first put them in,or Keeper footbraces would fly off if your foot was behind them,or Neckys strap rudder adjustments would be sloppy as all hell or Perceptions cam lock thigh brace buckles would rust and scrape on wet-exits,etc, etc.

    basically I’m curious when day hatches showed up. They’re touted as an upgrade item over lower grade model kayaks, the aft pump on brit boats never made sense so if there’s a hole for it it seemed natural to fill it with a hatch and call it something since a mold was made for the deck to be that way. It was a pricey option on Brit boats.

Skirt
I just don’t like having stuff in the cockpit, or having to pop my skirt(usually neoprene and fairly tight) to get at things.

I like my wife’s day hatch
It’s great to be able to raft up and open her day hatch to get at my stuff. She wishes I had one for her :).

Bravo!
“I just don’t like having stuff in the cockpit, or having to pop my skirt(usually neoprene and fairly tight) to get at things.”



That’s IT! THE reason for my favoring day hatch over cockpit as storage of “on water use” items. Neoprene skirts usually fit tight, repeatedly pulling it off and back on is a real pain for us short-armed folks.



Why to have such a tight-fitting skirts? So it doesn’t pop off by itself when you want to roll.


In addtion…

– Last Updated: Feb-22-04 7:30 PM EST –

And don't even get me started on the trouble with too big cockpits for us small folks...

In short, I like my cockpit small, and to keep my "stuff" in the day hatch. Instead of cluttering up the cockpit...

Come to think of it, majority of British boats have relatively low cockpit volumes so they really do "need" the day hatch to store their lunch! :o)

Cockpit is for body and hatch for things
"Most folks are not paddling very low volume boats so there’s a lot of accesible space in the cockpit that a few bungies and fastek buckles can secure things. "



But why “not paddling very low volume boats”?



I thought the only reason a person is paddling a boat of certain volume is that the volume is “right” for his or her body size. Not for the extra space to store camera, windbreaker and lunch. Why not seperate where the paddler sits (i.e. cockpit) and where the day-use items are stored (i.e. day hatch)?


i would not place anything in
my cockpit I couldn’t afford to lose, drinking water, bilge pumps, etc, and all this other stuff well, in surf landing situations I have lost all of them wet exiting. Granted this was before I had a good roll. But why risk losing a platypus bag inside the cockpit when you can just put it in a friggin day hatch. If you don’t want one fine, but it seems silly. A cockpit is basically one step away from the sea. You can even lose stuff if you don’t swim. If you just pop out of the boat when you go to land and are running up to grab the bow to pull the boat higher up the beach, WHAM, the boat is taken by a wave, say bye bye to everything in the cockpit. I would certainly think someone stupid who lost a bunch of gear from their cockpit who had a day hatch on their kayak but decided to use their cockpit to store it instead.

Too much segmentation
I’ve never missed having one and frankly wouldn’t want one. I am small enough that the boats that kindasorta fit me (let alone low-volume ones) would be less useful for hauling gear if the rear cargo area were split into two sections.



It’s like using a backpack with two compartments instead of three: more flexibility in packing arrangements.



Small items I want to access quickly seem to do pretty well in pockets (sprayskirt pocket, PFD pocket) or contained in a small drybag or Rubbermaid container stashed in my cockpit. Plenty of room in the cockpit for such small things. There’s always on-deck storage, too, though I don’t like to put anything but paddle float and pump there.

some agreement some questions

– Last Updated: Feb-23-04 2:55 AM EST –

!,I agree 100%,,except I'd put the pump inside the cockpit under the foredeck.

yes, me too unless I knew it would be needed, then the pump on a fastex buckle is pretty cool (thanks bolonsky)Secure and keeps my boat secure.


2. Accessability of extra water : imagine placing "extra" water low and central to your body mass, ie. 2liters right at the bottom of the kayak between your feet.

How about the bottom of your day hatch two inches fron you butt with you other stuff above it so it cannot shift too bad. Closer to your center of gravity, better insurance against flopping around during a roll, not lost if you punch out in surf. (Have you ever seen a full-out cockpit gear yard sale in surf?) Can you carry a self launching parachute flare on you? They big mon!

3.
"A place to keep and extra layer, (I like a huge cheap rainjacket, got a cold buddy or aelf, toss it over pfd and all and get out asap, (thanks LIz N.)) Ok,,ASAP to me means ASAP. jackets are stowable enough to put behind backband under skirt. Much quicker and safer access than day hatch with spare paddle on it."

When I said get out asap I mean get off the trip. I am not happy with someone paddling in a raincoat over a pfd, can trap a bit of water there.

My day hatch is never set up with the paddles over it. Who would do that?

More later must go!