teak decks

[thistle]

I have been an avid sailor my entire life. Boating area: Long Island Sound and the New England Coast until 3 years ago when I bought a 36 ft. Albin Trawler. Love the boat ....hate the decks (they leak)! I would like to remove the teak, repair the fiberglass decks and replace the teak. Has anyone done this? Any suggestions or information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Dave

[jleonard]

I thinik if you read below you'll find a thread about this

[DougSea]

I have been an avid sailor my entire life. Boating area: Long Island Sound and the New England Coast until 3 years ago when I bought a 36 ft. Albin Trawler. Love the boat ....hate the decks (they leak)! I would like to remove the teak, repair the fiberglass decks and replace the teak. Has anyone done this? Any suggestions or information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Dave

Hi Dave, and welcome to AOG!

As Jay points out - a quick search may reveal many answers! Lots of discussion on teak decks!

(Like the Thistle name! My Scottish Grandparents would have approved!)

[Veebyes2]

Thankfully I have NO exterior teak on my 32 however I do have a friend who has an early 80s Marine Trader 36 sedan. After years of dealing with the joys of teak decks he tore his up, refinished everything underneath & refinished with a nice nonskid material. The only teak that he left was the area under his 'back porch'.

Not only the deck but he got busy on the window frames too. Painted over most of them. These days he is left with teak accents here & there & is a much happier boater.

[Daryl]

The previous owner of my A33 had the same idea. Before I purchased it eight years ago he pulled up a lot of teak, did some firbeglass and core replacement then reinstalled the teak. Ultimately it is a BAD DESIGN and leaks appeared within a year or two. The cost of materials and labor involved to fix this is huge. Year after year I delayed this job. Now I may sell the old girl rather than take on this job. Good luck with yours.

[bccanucker]

The previous owner of our 36' had the job done. For removal of teak decking on main and bridge decks, repairing rot in deck core, fibreglass where teak deck removed and replacing with painted non skid surface took 160 hour for $8,000. labour + $2,200. materials = $10,200. plus taxes in 2005.
Not much of a DIY job

[jleonard]

Not much of a DIY job

Actually it IS a DIY job or at least I consider it so. I rebuilt much of the deck space on my old Mainship and it's "just" time consuming and messy.
Horizontal deckwork is pretty easy to get right and if you paint or gelcoat with non skid it hides a lot of sins.
Still though, all in all, I am glad I re -caulked my teak and plan on keeping it teak as long as I can. Re caulking teak is not all that hard either except for getting the right weather window to do the job.

[bccanucker]

My hat off to your skills. Big job. I have never learned to do fiberglass work and have a fear of it.

[jleonard]

I have never learned to do fiberglass work and have a fear of it.

Me too until a buddy of mine said..."hey the worse that can happen is it comes out bad or doesn't cure....so you grind it out and start over".

I have started over more than once.

[DougSea]

My hat off to your skills. Big job. I have never learned to do fiberglass work and have a fear of it.

Start small and use West System. Their pump kits and numbering system make getting the epoxy right SO easy. I started that way fixing the keel on my whaler. Mix the epoxy, soak the fabric, lay it in place.

[mike66]

Jay, I have a 40' also and the survey showed little moisture under the teak, but that I should start the recauking process beacuse it's starting to age and crack. How long did it take to do yours, and did you replace the deck screw plugs? I was thinking of backing out the screws and then injecting some CPES from Rot Doctor into the core before replacing the screws. Is this overkill or a waste of time? I'd like to keep the decks as long as possible, and I don't have any visible leaks now.
Mike

[jleonard]

It took the admiral and I 2 full days to re caulk the flybridge deck. We did not replace the bungs as they appeared in good shape.
I spent a few hours one day in advance measuring things, and made two scraper tools out of screwdrivers by bending the shanks and grinding the blade to the correct width.
Basically we removed the old caulk with a hot knife (from Defender), scraped out the remaining caulk, sanded to get super clean edges, vacuumed, cleaned with acetone, masked, applied caulk, then removed the tape.
Removing the tape is the messy and critical part of the job. Remove tape too soon and it pulls the wet caulk out of the groove. Wait too long and the tape sticks under the cured caulk.
We found that if we did 2 or 3 grooves then removed the tape it worked out good.
The following week I used a pad sander and did a very quick "scuffing" of the entire bridge to remove the high sections of caulk and to clean up the edges. By quick I mean maybe 20 minutes or so.
It looked "splotchy" for about 3 weeks until the sun turned it all back to grey.
There are a few places where the teak splintered when I scraped it....so the "divit" is filled with caulk. Oh well, not perfect, but then the price was right. I don't know how you'd prevent all the splintering anyway.

If you want pics or more detail send me a e mail to
jleonard at usa.norgren.com

[Despacio]

I removed my teak decks a year ago. The story and photos are in another thread. Replacing the teak requires adding all of those holes that you really don't want. I'd be surprised if your teak is thick enough or in good enough shape to replace. There's that phony teak.

I recommend doing it. Of course you can spend as much as people want to charge or very little if you can do it yourself.

Read that thread, and if you have any questions, please email me and ask.

There are photos of my boat without the teak, it looks better to me than it did with the teak. Only real disadvantage is that you can no longer drop the anchor on deck.

Marty

[jleonard]

Only real disadvantage is that you can no longer drop the anchor on deck.

Perhaps but chipped paint or gelcoat is much easier to fix than gouged teak planking.

The real disadvantage is you no longer have the "soft feel" of teak undefoot. Fiberglass is hard and slippery, even with nonskid compared to teak.

[seblyte]

I just want to share a strange discovery. My compartment under the desk in the aft cabin was full of rot so I pulled it all out. I found four holes drilled into the fibreglass deck leading straight to the teak and they had been weeping for ever. It seemed as though they should have been drilled for a deck fitting but there was no fitting in place or had ever been removed. Why they were there I do not know. I've sealed them now.