Also known as Jerry-rigging... I'm interested in stories of mechanical failures at sea and how you might (or did) cobble together a temporary solution.
For example, I once had the latch pop off one of the forward
hatches of a charter. It had been glued to the inside of the lexan, not bolted through it, so when the glue failed, no latchee. It kept popping up and catching the
jib sheet on a tack. The
hatch had a little gas strut that held it up, so I popped the strut out and hung a pair of shoes off the end of it, which avoided the worst of the problems - save for some water leakage.
Fortunately the weather was relatively mild, because I'm sure if we'd started taking waves over the bow I would have had gallons of water pouring through that
hatch.
Any other suggestions for how I might have fastened the
hatch down securely without drilling a hole in somebody else's hatch? I guess if I'd run into a real storm, I might have been less reluctant to do that, on the grounds of necessity.
Other jury-rigged
repair stories welcome.