Doors of The RV Endeavor by Lindsay Olson.

One of the fascinating things I’ve noticed on the ship are the doors. The round openings with a cover are called hatches, and the majority of the doors are specialty doors that seal with a system of clamps and gaskets. These specialized doors prevent water from spilling into the boat. Many doors have knee high threshold,s and several of us have already barked our shins. (Spatial awareness is an important shipboard skill.)

Inspecting the hatches and doors is a quarterly shipboard task, and I happened to find AB Patrick Buell inspecting the door to the main science lab. Patrick explained that in order to check the water tightness of all the seals, he runs a chalk line over the door frame. When he dogs the door down (that’s ships talk for closing all the levers around the door) the chalk makes an imprint along the gasket. This shows him where he needs to adjust the torque of an individual dog. All the nuts on the dogs must be torqued down to just the right tightness so that all the levers that lock the door in place create an even seal. The gaskets must also be checked for wear and tear and all the moving parts greased carefully.

One bit of ship superstition says that placing a round hatch belly side up is very bad luck. Our excellent crew look out for our well-being in general and so far, no one has left a hatch cover off with the wrong side up!

Special thanks to Patrick Buell, AB, Jason Agnich, Marine Technician, Asst. Engineer, Kurt Rethorn, and First Mate Chris Armanetti for educating me about specialized doors and hatches.