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Safety Note

We fell foul of, I believe, a design fault in the Lewmar hatches.  On a summer cruise, the hinge pins snapped on both of the main hatches.  It turns out that they were made of plastic.  Replacements were hard to get at short notice, so we improvised out of a plastic coat hanger for the remainder of our cruise.  Later, on bringing the simultaneous failures to the attention of Lewmar, they provided us with a set of replacement aluminium hinge pins, plus some spares, for which we are grateful.

On researching the topic on the web, I found out that it was a known problem, but not a particularly well publicised issue.  I feel strongly that there should have been some sort of recall.  Had these hinges failed at sea, in some heavy weather, there could have been an major safety problem.

Last modified: April 25, 2004