Zarcor Doors

One of the accommodation features that helped draw us to the Islander Freeport was the huge companionway.....we old matelots need as much room as we can get! Many of the boats we had seen previously had restricted cabin access through small hatches and down steep narrow steps so the Freeport design, with its generous opening and wide steps, really set it apart from its contemporaries. That was the good news. Not so good, from our perspective, was the design of the companionway closure, a 25% hatch-board and 75% hinged door arrangement.

In addition to being a fiddly set-up with fixed and removable wooden parts (all needing the usual maintenance effort) the design isn't very user friendly, particularly for the frequent comings and goings of a full time live-aboard crew. With no bridge deck, the two lower hatch boards were likely provided to offer a measure of insurance against possible water intrusion over the low companionway threshold in case the cockpit was unexpectedly flooded (pooped) while the doors were open. In reality, from our observations on many boat types, because of the inconvenience of stepping over them, hatch boards are usually removed, even when underway. We have seen them removed on a Freeport while the upper doors were closed! Hatch boards, smatch-boards.... from a purely personal perspective, unless the weather is really balmy, we always sail with the companionway fully closed up. Watching a friend fall into the cabin through an open companionway when we were hit by a big wake, on a glorious sunny afternoon many moons ago, convinced us that things need to be buttoned up when under way. No matter the companionway design and no matter what the weather is doing, close it up! 

Making things even more problematic for us was the fact that all Circe's companionway pieces and parts were very loose and had lots of gaps and drafts due to general wear and tear plus multiple sanding and varnishing cycles over the years. We knew going in that this was an area of the boat that needed attention but it was a long way down 'The List' behind all the other jobs we have been doing. We briefly considered replacing the stock set-up with new teak parts but very little research was needed to discover that custom teak woodwork is crazy expensive, plus we would still have what we consider a less than ideal set-up. Then, one day we saw a boat with double doors made from King Starboard by Zarcor......we were hooked and immediately started investigating.

http://www.zarcor.com

We had already dealt with Zarcor several times, buying our window (OceanAir) and port light (Peek-a-Booo) shades from them, and found them to be a good outfit to work with so we started the process of ordering a set of their full length doors. The whole process was extremely simple, the only variation from Zarcor's recommendations for making the template was that we made ours directly from the companionway rather than from the old doors and hatch boards, as they were so badly worn.

This shot shows the old worn hatch boards rattling around in their guide.

This one shows the heavy paper we used for our template, taped across the companionway. Also visible is the delightful discovery we made when we removed the register plate for the hatch locking bolt....but that's another story!

When the new doors arrived we set them into place for a trial fit and found they were very close to perfect, a pleasant surprise given the relatively crude template we sent to Zarcor. Three easily interchangeable inserts are supplied for the window apertures; regular window panes, opaque privacy panes and bug screens. There are also manually operated vents in each door.

We did need to make some slight adjustments to he door edges but a couple of quick passes with the router took care of things.









We were lucky when we removed the short guides for the hatch boards. The goop used to seal them cleaned off fairly easily leaving only the top and bottom screw holes for gelcoat repair, the new bottom hinges for the new doors covered the old center screw holes which we filled with epoxy. The two shots below show the before (left) and after (right) appearance of the cabin wall under the hatch board guides.

Fitting the new hinges proved to be a bit more challenging. The longer doors required three hinges per side instead  of the two per side on the old teak doors. From a purely cosmetic standpoint we were forced to use the old hinge locations for the top four hinges, which meant we couldn't evenly space the bottom two, seen above on the starboard door. Not a huge deal although it did offend our eye for symmetry. A pleasant surprise was seeing how closely the 'seafoam' door colour matches the old gelcoat.

We also made a small door stop to keep the doors level with the threshold when closed.

Here is the finished installation from the outside and........

........from the inside. In this shot the square and level top edges of the door windows emphasize the tilted and slightly off-center location of the companionway hatch. This misalignment isn't so obvious from outside and its not really a big deal, other than aesthetically, so we will make new inner and outer header boards for the hatch to disguise this a bit better.

Because of the cockpit and companionway design the port side door opens fully.........

.....while the starboard side only opens as far as the edge of the cockpit locker lid, but this is well past 90 degrees. If we want more room in the cockpit or better access.............

.........we can either close that door or lift it off as shown at left. We think this a small price to pay for all the other benefits. It is really nice not having to fuss with the hatch boards when coming in or out of the cabin and not feeling cold drafts inside when the wind is on the stern. 

Addendum 4-20-12

Once the doors had been in place for a while, and we were happy with the way they worked, we decided we needed to improve the operation, security and interior cosmetics of the companionway hatch. It was spoiling the look of the new door installation. The original inner and outer hatch header boards had been hacked around over the years and the single securing barrel bolt supplied by the factory had disappeared at some point. We knew we could do better.

The general sloppiness of the hatch in it's runner/guide channel put a lot of side stress on the bolt. That, combined with inadequate wall thickness to accept screws caused the register plate to rip out.

We used thickened epoxy to fill the hollow underside of the hatch guide channels on both sides for secure mounting of the register plates and fitted two barrel bolts, a replacement one on the port side..............

..........and a new one on the starboard side.  Having the two bolts stops the twisting of the hatch if it is pushed when they are both engaged.

Here is the repaired port side register plate.

New starboard side register plate.









Another issue with the sliding hatch was that there was no positive stop to control the position when it was pulled closed. To overcome that problem we installed two hard rubber stops in the hatch guide channels at the fully closed position. This simple upgrade stops the hatch twisting as it is closed and brings both barrel bolts into to correct alignment. No more fussing to get the bolts to engage.

Starboard side stop in hatch guide channel, Hatch open.

Port side stop, hatch closed.

We fitted a stainless latch on the inside of the new doors. It won't stop a determined burglar but it will slow one down and, hopefully, cause enough noise to wake us up. The exposed exterior hinge fasteners on both the original and the new doors means that, without a major re-design, there will never be a really effective barrier. 

As a finishing touch we put two small hooks on the interior header for wet foulies etc.