Electric engine hatches are so useful, just push a button and "open sesame", your treasures are there, no more climbing down through hatches doubled over in those strange "boat yoga" positions. All is far from perfect though, electric or electrohydraulic hatches have their own unique set of challenges, especially when they fail.
Following a recent spate of boats with flat batteries and the inability to start engines or open their engine hatches, it got me thinking about how various boat manufacturers deal with getting an engine hatch open that requires battery power to do so, and, also how things could be improved.
If the installation has been done well by the boat builder, the top part of the electric or hydraulic ram that lifts the hatch up will have an access panel in the engine hatch that can be opened and the bolt and cotter pin can be removed to open the engine hatch manually. Please be warned, some of these hatches are seriously heavy, you better have Terry Crews and Braun Strowman on standby to help. This access panel may be double duty as an auxiliary fire port, allowing you to open an entry into the engine room to put the spout of a fire extinguisher in there. The idea being the port should allow enough space to put a hand or arm in and remove a pin that holds the ram in place and remove it.
Problems with existing method of manual opening of an electric hatch
- When was the last time that pin was actually checked? Those pins are usually heavy duty and require a fair amount of effort to pull them out.
- When the pin is removed where is the ram going to fall? Is there potential for it to hit a battery terminal, fall on a tank, whack the head of the fire extinguisher?
- How are you going to prop the engine hatch open? No matter how strong your mates are, whilst they are holding the hatch, something has to be done to hold the hatch open.
External electrical connections
This is the easiest way to do it, some yards where they offer long term storage, will disconnect battery terminals for indoor storage and so need a way to lower and raise the hatches to connect them again. One option of using an external battery or booster pack and connecting it straight to a fuse panel that holds the engine hatch circuit, this could be cables straight to the panel itself or to a pair of distribution busses.
Issues with this method:
- Potential for sparks when connecting and disconnecting the cables to the panels or buss bars.
- Potential to mix up positive and negative (it does sometimes happen)
- Difficult access to panels and the needing of various sizes of electrical clip or clamp to get a good connection.
Kudos to the boat builder (Sea Ray) in the photo above, a pair of battery posts to be able to raise the engine hatch in case of no house (service) battery.
Another method that is commonly seen is via the 12V cigar lighter socket, using a male cigar light connector that goes straight into the 12V receptacle socket in the dashboard, the cables from the connector are then connected to a battery or power pack, this will power up the fuse panel with the engine hatch circuit and allow it to be raised or lowered, this method has a drawback, cigar lighter sockets are rated up to 15 amps, some engine hatch circuits are protected by a 20 amp fuse, the result is a blown fuse on the lighter socket and a closed or partially open engine hatch. This was a popular installation for many years, until engine hatches got heavier, some hatches are so heavy they need two rams to open them.
If your boat has an electric hatch, look at how the installation has been done and if if can be improved. A future project might be installation an external feed to open the hatch in the event of a dead battery and also the fuse for the hatch on the outside of the engine room, yes I have seen this, the fuse that protects the engine hatch circuit is located inside the engine room, so if the fuse is blown, the normally easy task of replacing it becomes some sort of mission, no logic to this at all.
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