Your right Don, it's just a filler.
On the original deck hatch with the pry out hatches that housed the batteries underneath became a pain in the arse to remove and then reseal everytime to service the batteries. I then made a new hatch with a gutter which worked until the transom redo...
Here's a prior picture of the deck hatch with the gutters before the splash well removal. I used to screw around with that darn thing all the time when it was in it's original config..
