I have experienced the flooded locker problem. ...
I didn't regard this as a locker design issue until I read this thread.
Well it is a design issue. By design, water can get in but not out again. And worse, once the water gets in, the boat heels even more, so even more water gets in, until the locker compartment is full, and I estimate that is about 200 ltrs. of extra water which one cannot get out again at sea in those conditions. And even worse, this process is not symmetric, i.e. it does not seem to happen in both side compartments equally, so as to balance themselves out, but the self-aggravating flooding of one side stowage locker on seems to lead to the opposite locker staying dry.
The solution cannot be seals, because the righting capapility from inversion of the boat would be negatively impacted by the lockers NOT filling during an attempted inversion roll-back. And, as we experienced, because of the water entering from the cockpit side, where the locker lids are not sealed nor would be sealable. And, I attach a photo from my boat Homer after one season, seals are unreliable anyway.
IMO a real improvement would already be to cut out the vertical cockpit wall higher, raising the treshold height for water entering from the cockpit side, and to cut the horizontal locker top at the gunnel side (where they now put the seals) much less, and in a curved fashion.
The safest solution would be to -also- put in a new floor inside the compartments at the cockpit floor level, so no water can get caught in the lower tip of the compartment below the cockpit floor level.
CR