Modern Portlights. A poor design? Why?

[Rotten Ricky]

I am puzzled by the design of port-lights available and installed in modern sailboats. It seems that in the design of hatches and sky-lights, they got it right. The opening lid portion closes over the base and the natural flow of water will run off the lid and be kept out.

By comparison the port-lights I have seen are designed on the opposite principle. The moving portion opens inwards. It is not designed to have water naturally kept away from the inside of the base. It allows the water to run to a position inside the base and be stopped only by a seal - that deteriorates and relies on clamps to hold it tight. And protrudes awkwardly into the interior.

Surely if the same principles of hatch design were used for port-lights the result would be a better, watertight port-light. It would still need a gasket but it would be OUTSIDE the boat. Any leakage would not automatically make the interior wet. You could sometimes open the port without rain entering.

The vertical or angled side of a cabin need not mean that the top edge will allow water inside an opened port if a shield is placed above the top edge like an eyebrow. Or the design of the base and the port might include a flexible but watertight strip of something to prevent water falling down past the hinges and inside.

Of course, an inward opening port on the inside of a hull makes sense so that a dock moving by it would not destroy it. And I can see that on a very narrow side deck an opening port-light could be a tripping problem but I seldom see decks so narrow. Would lines catch on the port-light? I think the shield or something similar would tend to prevent that happening.

Why do we still see this old port-light design that are a pain to use inside, tend to leak and are so expensive? I am thinking about buying some 18" long by 6" high, rectangular hatches and mounting them on the cabin sides to replace the awful existing port-lights.

I await your wisdom!

Cheers to all,

RR.

[Jim Cate]

I've seen a lot of French yachts that use deck hatches as ports. A bit clunky looking, but supremely practical. Ovni and Garcia and others come to mind.

Jim

[Graywolf77]

Stay clear of Beckson!