Deck the Halls...

I cannot deny that one of the most important aspects of our choice of yacht for our cruising adventures was the inherent romance and pride of owning a beautiful, lovingly crafted and well maintained work of art. Not for us the pragmatism of making do and compromise on this issue. I have always loved the look of a monohull with a wine glass stern and a ketch just set the right mood for tickling the romantic in me. So, no cats or trimarans, no concrete or steel, no veneer and no lightweight plastic fantastics masquerading as cruising yachts. Moonshadow is a solid 14 tonnes unladen of pure craftsmanship and beauty.

As it was, we ended up with a sloop with a canoe stern, but no less beautiful and rewarding. Built in 1984 with a crafted mahogany interior, redolent of an old manor house ‘gentleman’s’ study; classic lines and all the comforts of home. Small at 49ft (including the bowsprit) Margie and I are confident of our ability to sail our girl on our own as well as Moonshadow’s personality and ability to take care of us.

This also comes with some downsides such as the maintainance  required on certain aspects. The bright work and varnishing, the stainless (?) steel and the teak deck.

We have heard all the horror stories of having a teak deck; the weight, the leaks the thousands of screws into the hull and oh, the maintainance! Friends and peers have recommended stripping the teak and restoring to a clinical and easily maintained fibreglass and characterless topsides but this is not for us.

So the time has come for some major renovation of the teak deck. The caulking was in poor shape and standing proud of the teak making for an uncomfortable tread and preventing the easy runoff of water. I thought to myself that I would research and learn how to do this myself and what an education it has been. I remember my Dad always saying that the secret is in the preparation when doing work like this and he was so right.

Various shots of the deck in progress!

My first task was to lower the existing black caulking to be level with the deck timbers. Research suggested that doing this with a razor blade scraper was the way to go but I found this tedious and unsatisfactory. I ended up using a really sharp blade on an oscillating multi tool, laying it flat on the deck and smoothly removing the proud caulking. This worked a treat and allowed me to closely examine the caulk for the areas that were sound and those areas that needed to be replaced. Fortunately, only about 30% of the total area needed to be stripped so I set about removing the split caulking with a caulking hook, a really sharp Stanley knife and lots of scraping and cleaning the grooves between the boards. This seemed to take forever but Dad’s advice was constantly on my shoulder like some piratical parrot.

The next task was to lightly sand the surface taking care to remove only the absolute minimum amount of timber to provide a flat surface. This made a huge difference to the look and feel of the deck and I was encouraged to continue this DIY adventure.

The timber deck is screwed to the hull and each of the thousands of screws is buried beneath teak plugs. Or so it is meant to be. Hundreds of the plugs had deteriorated and exposed all these sorry looking screws. They had to be replaced and replugged. Getting the old screws out proved problematic in a lot of places and meant hours and hours of work on my knees to extract the broken, sheared and simply stubborn screws taking care not to damage the deck or the plug holes. I discovered that you can buy new plugs at Whitworths (Australia’s premier chandler) at $1.00 each which would have been very expensive for the hundreds that needed to be replaced. I found an alternative in a drill bit plug cutter at a hardware store and I had a few spare bits of quality teak in the ‘someday I’ll find a use for this store’. On a trip down to see my brother in Katherine I took my ‘plug cutter’ and bits of teak and sequestered myself in his wonderful shed. ( I wish we had a shed!) A few hours later I had hundreds of plugs cut (slightly tapered) in the old pieces of teak. (Thanks 'Bro!)

Back on the boat, the matching drill bit to the plug cutter was a Forstner bit that has the unique trick of being able to cut flat bottomed holes to precisely fit the plugs. With the screws removed and after buying hundreds of new stainless steel deck screws, I set about drilling the deck with the Forstner bit to ever so slightly lower the bottom of the plug holes. This had to be done with extreme care so as not to drill into the hull and leave enough thickness of timber for the screws to be secure and hold down the deck planking.

Days later, this part was complete and I could set about plugging the holes. This went really well as the plugs were a tight fit and the tapering made the insertion easy. A slight tap with the mallet and it was done. The part of the plug that protrudes above deck needed to be cut off and for all the advice on YouTube about chisels, I found that the most efficient way was to place a washer over the protruding plugs and use the trusty multi tool to saw the plugs almost flush with the deck and follow with a gentle sanding with a hand block. (The washer gave me just enough surplus to make this an easy process.)

So now all the screws are replaced and plugged flush with the deck. It’s time to tackle the caulking!

Life is great!

Jeremy