New Cockpit Rails

So I am way behind on updating this, but hey, at least it's here now!

After doing the SeaDek, the StarBoard cockpit rails really looked awful. People say how wonderful that stuff is. "It doesn't stain" "easy to clean" "doesn't deform" Bullshit.

Mine looked horrible. They had black crud into the material in the cracks. I scrubbed. I power-washed. I even sanded. They had sagged over the years and deformed. There was no getting them clean. In looking at the photo above as I write this, I had forgotten how bad they really did look!

 

I made the decision that I wanted teak rails there. Now, I'm pretty good with wood. But I don't have a larger planer, and with the cost of the stock, I didn't want to have to do this one twice. So I paid someone to make the rails for me.

When I walked up on the boat I realized just what a dramatic difference it made. Even with no varnish on them .














After 7 coats of Pettit Flagship Varnish, they gleamed. I decided that it was worth every penny and knew that I had made the right decision.

You may also notice in these photos that the canvas looks a bit different. That's because it's new!

More about that in the next posting.

The SeaDek project

Some of you may be acquainted with a show called ShipShape TV and a guy named John Greviskis. If you aren't, just think "This Old House" for boats and you'll have the idea.

My Sunday morning routine is to get up, make coffee, and watch the show. You can learn tons from this guy. He is always also talking about new products in the marine industry. And that's the rub. You see something like SeaDek and say "Hey, that's just what I need for the cockpit on the boat!" and then you go away and quietly begin writing checks.

Myt cockpit floor was structurally sound, and completely serviceable. It had stains and spider cracks as you would expect for a 26 year old boat. I started thinking about all the repair work that would have to be done to make it look "right" and well after seeing SeaDek on ShipShape - it started to make sense. It's an EVA foam that looks like teak, requires zero maintenance, has great non-skid properties, and can be washed with a pressure washer. I mentioned it to my fiberglass guy one day and he said "I do that". This is the part where I started writing checks.

So - here's some photos:

Before

Before

Before

I hired a guy to do all the work. Could I have done the templates myself? Probably. But, it's important to know what you can do, and what is better to hand off to a pro. If I didn't get the template right, I'd have a ton of useless SeaDek as it was custom. So I decided to make it Aaron's problem if there was going to be one.

Was it expensive? Yes.
Was it required? No.

Does it make the boat look like another vessel entirely, YOU BET! I think it takes 15 years off her.

Would I do it again? - yes, tomorrow!

Cleaning the swim platform

While the boat was out of the water to be detailed, I decided to clean and seal the swim platform. First it needed to be cleaned though. My friend Tommy at the marina recommended a product called Snappy Teak Nu.  

I'll let you be the judge.

Before

Before

After

After

After

Jim's Teak refinishing, Inc.

When I was a kid, we had a 1958, 42' Matthews double cabin. If you ask my mother, she'd say this was when I became infected with the boating virus. By the way, there is no known cure for this particular type of insanity. Ever.

She was mahogany over oak stringers. I generally say she was like furniture with engines. As you can imagine, my Father was a whiz with wood and taught me a few things here and there. So when it came time to do varnishing, I said "no problem, I got this". 

I wanted to replace as much of the teak vinyl veneer that was in the boat as was practically possible. It was ugly and lets face it, it wasn't fooling anyone, not even itself. There is nothing that looks like Teak with a bunch of varnish on it. It almost glows and I love the look of it. 

I did a bunch of research and the best choice for me seemed like Pettit's Flagship Varnish. And it's very, very good. At $120 a gallon, it better be!

Here's a tip..... There is a huge argument as to if you should use natural brushes or foam "throwaway" ones. Maybe the really good guys can get a better result with the natural bristle ones, but I found I could get a more even coat, with less brush marks, with foam ones. Now, you might think all foam brushes are crated equal. They aren't. Do yourself a favor and get the good ones! Yes, I know, they are 3x as expensive... and there is a reason! The ones I use are made by Wooster and have plastic, molded handles. You can use them about 3 or 4 times if you clean them before you have to throw them away and they don't fall apart like the cheap ones do. 

I started with recovering all the doors and drawers with real Teak veneer from World Panel Products in South Florida.  It comes in 4x8 sheets. You can see a partial one in the background of this photo.

This is after only 1 coat of varnish.

And this is after 6 coats of varnish. See what I mean about the "glow"?

Trim rails and kick plates from the cabin post sanding. The one in the foreground is for comparison.

And after....

Here's another tip - your double sided ladder makes for a good drying rack!

As an aside... I called Pettit's tech support. They recommend that you not varnish in humidity above 80 %. I explained to the rep that I was in Florida. He sort of laughed. 

I had read about a product that you can add called Japan Drier (available at Lowes). It helps offset high humidity and makes the varnish dry a bit faster. Otherwise it is a week between coats here. This stuff is like magic. 

If you live in Florida, or anywhere humid. It's a Godsend. The guys from Pettit just recommended that you not use more than 10% ratio and never, ever add it to the main can, only your work pail. Otherwise you will ruin a perfectly good gallon of varnish as it will become a solid after about 3 days. 

The leak, pulpit, and tropical storm - Part 1

No, it's not a movie with Steve Martin and John Candy.

I had looked everywhere I could think of in the cabin for the source of the leak that was manifesting itself in the Head. I had poked, inspected, and tested everywhere I could imagine that water could be getting in. All of that testing left me with one conclusion. The water had to be getting in at the bow pulpit. Of course I was hoping that I could just rebed or reseal something.

That was not to be the case.

In looking at the anchor chain passthrough from the underside, I could see that there was a gap between the deck and the pulpit. I knew that had to be where the water was ingressing. You can see the gap here if you look hard.

I knew that meant the pulpit had to come off and I knew that meant the boat needed to come out of the water, anchor removed and bow rails removed. NOT a small job. As the boat came out of the water I found out that there was a tropical storm headed my way. Leaky cabin + tropical storm = big problem. Fortunately, the manager at my marina was nice enough to let me move the boat into the dry storage facility. It was off season, and since it was raining anyway, it wasn't a big deal for them.





And so the work began. My buddy Fred had "volunteered" to come up and help out. A decision he would soon regret



The first thing I discovered was that the windlass had not been properly bedded, which explained the leak. But the rot had to be repaired and I couldn't figure a way to fix the leak without pulling the pulpit, so we continued removing it.












When the pulpit was off, we were greeted with this sight. That's teak you are looking at. Rotted, soaking wet, teak. The good news is that it came off really easily. The bad news was I knew we were going to have to engineer a replacement.

By now it was midnight (ish) and both of us were exhausted from working in the Florida heat. We called it a night.