Waiting for spring
The last sail of the year was a beautiful one; my uncle Dave, Daniel and myself arrived in the weak morning sunshine to find the entire cockpit turned to skating rink. It seems I forgot to lower the front of the trailer to allow the drain to do its work. After bailing by breaking off bits of ice we went for a very nice long sail, freezing our butts off but enjoying the isolation nonetheless.
After our sail, Dave and Daniel had to run, but I needed to fuss with winter preparations. I removed the passageway board and wooden rails to refinish. Little did I know what I was in for! Teak is a very interesting wood.
The main reason I wanted to have a look at the passageway board was that one of the bolts holding the swing-keel raising winch had sunk in about half an inch and I was unsure of the state of the wood beneath it. Turns out the wood is just fine beneath - the head sunk in, causing a chip in the top surface of the board, but the drilled hole beneath is just fine.
Here is the board before I started work on it:
The very first thing I did was wash it aggressively in the bath tub with a scrubber and dish soap (as recommended by the internet), which actually lightened the teak from ash grey to the colour you see in the picture to the left.
It was varnished at one point, but most of the varnish on the top had worn off. Unaware of the unique properties of teak, I started with a planer, feeling that it would be nice to take about a half inch off and have all the bolts flush again. Ha!
Teak is so hard and strangely waxy that the planer skipped and left really frightening gouges (when it cut at all). I tried sharpening the blade, getting a new planer, changing the angle...and then moved on to trying to repair the damage I had caused by sanding. Oh my. I didn't have a dust mask, and I decided to do this in our living room!
The dust was everywhere, waxy and orange and itchy. Every time I cleaned off the wood the gouges were still there! I didn't seem to be making any progress and I'd been working on it for over 6 hours!
I don't think I ate anything from breakfast to around 7 or 8pm that day...
Finally, after another internet search or ten, I happened upon another method, scraping! In between, I happened upon a nice how to for those that are more inclined to buy many new tools (Teak Week). I wish I had bought a heat gun, and had a shop or a more temperate climate to accomplish this task, but using just a hand held scraper, I managed to do a pretty good job of getting the remaining varnish and most of my damage off one side of the board:
It's still not as nice as I'd like it, and the other side...well, I havent even started, and there's still the hand rails to go. I may need to purchase a heat gun after all for getting the varnish off the underside of the board:
I read that you can sand between varnish layers and then refinish over the remaining layer...but after my first experience with sanding teak I'm not sure I want to try again. I probably will, though, and I bought a dust mask this time!
I think I'll definitely have to sand the railings and hatch slide pieces - they were definitely varnished as well, and have worn right down to the wood in all the wear spots. one of the hatch slide pieces needs to be clamped and glued to seal a crack, as well.
Meanwhile, for christmas, I recieved a very nice combination VHF radio and gps unit, along with an excellent book of Lake ontario ports and several charts! I'm ready for spring! haha.
The boat, however, is hiding under the largest tarp I have ever owned (it is too big, however, I wasn't going to return it after how long it took me to finally get around to purchasing it!)
I'm pretty sure it'll stay dry!
Christmas ornaments and woodwork are not actually a good combination...
The best thing about the gigantic tarp is that I now have a winter fort:
The addition of the seat cushion was necessary after I noticed that the mast fittings were wearing a hole in the tarp..the rags just somehow migrated up there too.
Among the winter pastimes I've taken up to distract me from the fact I can't sail is an anchient book my roommate's father lent her on sailing. It claims to be a begginners book, but covers everything from navigation to rope splicing, so, because my father kept telling me my anchor line with no chain was useless, I finally learned how to splice a rope (or at least, I followed the instructions and it came out okay. Not sure I could do it again without the instructions)
Well. It's snowing. So I guess spring isn't here yet. OH WELL. I guess I'll go sand some teak.
