I’ve been paddling my Petrel SG for about 7 months now and am sincerely disappointed in the rear hatch, which lets in a significant amount of water in only mildly lumpy conditions.
This is the 17-1/4" x 10" oval hatch. The hatch rim is seated well in the Petrel’s recessed hatch ring, and neither it nor the hatch itself have mars that might compromise the seal. Since observing the issue I’ve been careful to align hatch and ring arrows when sealing the hatch, with no improvement.
I’ve contacted Sea-Lect about this and am also posting here to see if others have experienced this issue and / or know of a resolution. I’ve heard nothing but great things about this system and while nothing can be guaranteed waterproof, this particular hatch lets enough water in while surfing or in lumpy water to actually affect the boat’s stability.
Big oval hatches tend to leak, except for the old Valley hatches which were also a bear to take off. Best l have been able to do with my KS rear oval is to refresh it with 303 just ahead of bigger Paddle. Then after a bit it leaks again. I have a bunch of KS hatches, the rest are various sizes of round, and 10 years after getting some of them they are still bone dry.
Can you try another cover (borrow one maybe) to test that it is indeed the fault with the cover (and not the rim)?
Don’t know how to fix the cover to fit better.
I’ve had 3 kayaks so far with sea-lect hatches - they do fairly well (out of total of 8 hatches (3,3,2) - 2 leak a little after rolling practice).
I went through many Valley and NDK boats with no problems, until I did have a problem with one (the hatch cover was good - the ‘ring’ was mis-formed).
…old Valley hatches which were also a bear to take off…
(interestingly enough, a bear did take my rear oval hatch off, years ago, Nordkapp - on trip around Superior, camped on shore near Porcupine park, woke up to find hatch cover by the yak with a few puncture holes in it)
I’ll agree with the suggestion to try another cover. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what my boats like. I have Sea-Lect ovals on 2 boats & they don’t leak. One also has a Sea-Lect day hatch cover & it works fine. The other boat’s day hatch didn’t like Sea-Lect, so I had to stick with a Valley cover for its day hatch. Go figure.
I would also take steps to confirm it is the hatch ring part that is leaking, not the ring to boat hull part. Had a Necky Chatham 16 with similar recessed hatch which leaked and after a lot of testing, found that the ring was not the hatch leaking, but that the ring was installed with too little sealant. Removing ring, cleaning, and resealing fixed it.
Can you place water on the ring part (but not over the lip) to see if it is seaping through the ring-hill interface?