HATCH ROULETTE

Most of the time we keep all the hatches on the boat wide open to encourage the breeze to keep us cool below deck.  We want the breeze as often as we can so especially through the night we keep them open too.  With the open windows and whirling fans most of the time the temperatures are perfect (unless you ask Sev who prefers arctic climates).

Keeping the hatches open all the time comes with a few drawbacks.  As blogged earlier, Connor painfully discovered open hatches are not only easy but brutally painful to fall into.  Those fresh life giving hatches can also be death traps.  They think nothing of swallowing you whole, or worse, just eating an one of your appendages so that you are alive enough to suffer the pain and injury that results.  The other drawback to keeping the hatches open is rain. 

Rain doesn’t sound like much of a problem unless all the hatches are located above things you’d like to keep dry.  

One hatch is located right above the paper towel dispenser, which, once rain soaked renders them useless, (though I did discover you can take the swollen waterlogged roll and apply it to your neck).  Another hatch is located over the salon dining table where often my computer sits, along with everyone’s cell phones, ipads, and a plethora of other electronics that don’t operate well when soaked.  There are also large hatches over all our beds and I have spent at least two nights sleeping on a waterbed--though that is three less nights than poor Severin who not only has a hatch above his bed but also a large leak on rainy or high sea days.

We call it "Hatch Roulette", the way we keep them all open until it rains.  Usually when the rains come they show up abruptly and fiercely and by the time you realize a deluge had commenced, copious amounts of water have already spilled in on your dry things before you have the time to run inside and get them shut.  It’s a gamble to keep them open but we are a sailboat of breeze loving gamblers.

The most exciting gamble is at night.  Most of us always keep our hatches open and then usually once or twice (or five or six times) a night the skies will open up and pour.  It jolts you from slumber, half awake, trying to be cognizant enough not to sit up in such a rush that you smash your head on the low ceiling above you.  Then try to calmly but quickly shut the hatch before you’re soaked.  I got so good at this I could wake to rain, swing my right leg upward, grab the hatch handle with my dexterous right foot, pull it shut and swing the lever to the locked position with my toes.

Hatch Roulette is a game everyone should get to play once in their life.  Mark and I are hoping we’ll get to play it a dozen more times on more sailing adventures. Though I'm not sure my computer or paper towels are up for another spin.