Blue Opal’s water tanks are in the bow, under the master cabin berths. The boards that cover the lockers are a pain to remove, because they’re a friction fit. However, given there are two shut-off valves in the locker, I decided to make it a bit easier to get the locker boards up.
Having experienced how hard it is to get force transferred to a stuck board through a finger hole, I opted to use some three-strand rope that I have on board, splice in a handle/eye, and use a stopper knot on the other side to provide the bracing for the pull. The real answer is probably to sand down the edges of the boards, but I don’t have the facility to do that right now.
Spliced handle 
Stopper knot through a 10mm hole