Sliding Hatch Noise

Honestly we never really were bothered by the sound of our sliding hatch moving but apparently one of our neighbors in the marina was. He has a Catalina 22 in the next dock and came over one morning to offer his advice on a repair.

His suggestion was to purchase some automotive gasket material and put it under the teak slide rails to raise them up just a tiny bit. I read about a few others that had done this as well with some success. Since I was about to refinish the teak at the end of the winter, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to take his advice. We picked up this automotive gasket material from a local store (Benny’s) that sells automotive parts. Total cost was less than $2. This comes in a roll about 12 inches wide and 3 feet long and looks like very thin cork.

I then cut out strips with a utility knife just wide enough to go under the rails without sticking out. I needed 2 strips for each rail since the rails are longer than the 3 foot length. I lined the strips up with the rails and marked the screw holes with an awl into the gasket material so I could easily find them when we went to rebed them on the boat.

I then used some 3M spray adhesive to stick the gasket permanently on to the rails. We then took the rails back to the boat and rebedded them on.

You can see from the photo below where this ends up.

Now moving the hatch is a nice quiete operation.