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Last weeks windy trip north and motoring in the river showed my Mark 1's cockpit drains to nicely work in reverse to half inundate the cockpit floor.

We tried a few at-sea solutions such as rubbish partially blocking the cockpit side holes (making increased pressure against the outside wave slap ingress).

Seemed to work okay but now to do a better fix.

Thinking one way plastic flaps on transom side outlet.

Any others had a win on this or suggestions/pics?

My mark 3 does the same, but only when she's had a clean bum and we've got more than two on board. Apparently, according to Phillip, it's an undocumented feature of the mark 1 and not easy to circumvent unless you post a crew member on the pulpit....

It's all to do with the height of the cockpit floor above water level.
Sail fast and the stern of a Top Hat will dig in = more speed!

Formit tried to fix the problem by raising the Mk 2 & 3 floors by 100 mm.

It would probably need another 200 mm plus to have a dry cockpit but when you put that
against comfort for the other 99% of the time you use your Top Hat, not really worth worrying about.

I get over the problem by wearing sea boots unless its really warm and calm

The more upright you can sail a Top Hat the faster you go, digging the lee scuppers in does not necessarily mean faster!

Iluka has a wooden deck insert that gives about 100mm hight to the floor. I've found this is enough to keep the cockpit dry in most (not all) cases. The deck comes apart in 2 peices to make it easy to remove.

Cheers
Nick

Cheers Nick. Yeah that'd do the trick. Custom build or bought? Any pics/specs?

They were custom built by the previous owner. I found a photo of the inserts when they were out of the boat to be painted. There are 2 pieces that meet where the tiller goes through the floor.