Our time here is moving at light speed on Light Reach. We’ve tried to accomplish something each day before it gets to beastly hot to work. Still the list remains long but the good news is the Teak IS DONE!!! Quite frankly it was a bear to do. Scott took a heat gun to the remaining varnish but even so it was painstakingly slow work. It took well over a week to get all the teak stripped. There is a considerable amount of teak on this boat! Once he completed that I got after it with loads of water, teak cleaner, scrub brushes and plenty of elbow grease to brighten the teak back to its base color. We were originally going to let the teak weather to grey. While stripping and cleaning it we had lots of observations from folks passing by on this choice. Some were like yeah that’s the way to go and others were no its going to crack and you’ll regret that choice. We had ½ a container of teak oil on board which is a third option. Rather than varnish the teak you can oil it on a regular basis to keep it from drying out. This option avoids the blistering and peeling that is the bane of varnish. It also should prevent the teak from drying out and cracking. Of course it doesn’t come without pain as you have to clean it every so often and reapply the oil. We were pondering the oil option.
The marina has an area in the laundry room for freecycling. People leave gently used or no longer needed items there for others to take. Keeps it out of landfills and passes it on to someone who might get some more use out of it. We walked in one morning while we were in the midst of our teak ponderings and there on the counter was a full unopened gallon of teak oil with a second partially used gallon next to it. Wow seems the fates had decided we should oil the teak. We happily nabbed those two bottles and scampered back to the boat. Over the course of a week I put four coats of teak oil on Light Reach. We’ve received many compliments from folks and I think LR is feeling a bit younger. The plan is to put another coat on before we pull out for summer haul out. Hopefully four month on the hard will not prove to be too long to go without another coat.
With the teak done we’ve moved on to other projects. We put 301 on most of the exposed plastic instrument covers, fuel cans, cooler etc. We still need to do the dingy along with finding the leak. I’ve scrubbed both of the water tanks and started on the interior lockers. The next big job will be the topsides, washing and waxing them.
And lest you think we’ve had no fun at all we’ve also managed some happy hours with Jan and Kevin from Aria. We also welcomed back Sue and Gordon (Tooth Fairae) and Lynn and Jim (Cat Tails) from the Bahamas. Both has a wonderful time. Cat Tails left today for her summer haul but not before we had a nice sundowner session in their boat (Island Packet 38) and got caught up.
The picture is of the companionway hatch ready for teak oil. Scott did a fabulous job of prepping it. And hooray the blog is officially caught up.