"Donal" wrote in message
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"Jeff Morris" wrote in message
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"Donal" wrote in message
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That means
hatches were probably dogged.

Hatches are always sealed when a sailing boat is underway.


Wow, your crew must suffer on a hot day.

On a hot day, the crew are either in the cockpit or sleeping.

You don't prepare meals or eat? Often as not, someone will be down below.


There are lots of boats, and lots of
situations where its desirable and permissible to make way with a hatch
open. I
would say that 90% of the time we have a saloon hatch open underway,
weather
permitting. Three of our hatches (2 in the galley, one in the head) have
been
cracked open for all but a few hours in the last 5 years.

Where do you sail? ...in a river?

Atlantic Ocean. If I headed East I would hit Cape Finisterre, more or less. Of
course, the prevailing wind is from the West, so most of the time I'm in the lee
of a continent. Last Summer we did 20+ miles up or down the coast about 10
times. On two of those days we had conditions that forced us to seal up the
boat - the Cape Cod Canal episode I've mentioned, and the day following where we
had 25 to 30 knots onshore following 4 days of heavy weather offshore, so the
chop was 4-5 feet. Most of the trips we had small chop on long swells - almost
any boat over 35 feet should stay bone dry.




IIRC, the Tartan 37 has a hatch just forward of the companionway that
could be
left open in moderate conditions.

I wonder how you define "moderate" conditions????

You like to gauge everything by your personal experiance, but you sail in an
area with particualrly heavy commerical traffic, plus a strong current that
often opposes the wind. There are lots of places where one can sail and expect
to stay reasonably dry. And there are lots of boats that have hatches far
enough aft that are dry in most conditions. Many boats have hatches that are
virtually impossible to flood in anything other than severe weather. My Nonsuch
had a large hatch forward which stayed closed, but two small hatches aft, over
the galley and head - there's no reason to dog them down if there's no water on
deck.

Of course if the skipper is so unskilled that he can't recognise when its time
to batten down, he's probably better off just sealing up all the time.


BTW, I've been on a Tartan 37, and I wouldn't sail it with any hatches open
unless I was going up a canal, or a river.

Good for you.