That I had to remove my Ace “Deluxe Wrist Stabilizer” in order to type this in less than two hours should give you some idea. This is actually the 4th wrist brace to date, I’ve destroyed two working on the teak. I keep one for sweating in while working on the boat, and one for when I still want to have the hand immobilized but I don’t want it damp and smelling weird. Some people might think I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer to just slap on a brace and keep working, but unfortunately this has to get done. I am trying to find help though.
But seriously – good progress has been made on the caulking. I estimate about 70% of the caulk has been laid down. The remaining uncaulked area is the lower deck on the starboard side. It took two of us 14 hours of labor (and 22 tubes of caulk) to caulk the port side, so I expect a similar effort on the starboard side. Tomorrow I finish the prep on that – a little more sanding and an acetone wash, then I am ready to caulk.
Assuming the weather holds – it is supposed to rain on Friday and Saturday. You can’t run caulk on wet wood, it must be less than 12% moisture or the caulk will have problems. So standing puddles from the leaks in the shrinkwrap are a Bad Thing. I do have a tarp to cover part of the deck most likely to leak so that should minimize the water. I hope.
As it stands, it totally looks like hell now. When I did the proof of concept last year I colorfully described my boat as “looking like something escaped from LaBrea tar pits and took a s&%t in my cockpit”. Now it looks like a whole herd of somethings stampeded all over the boat.
The beauty emerges though, I’ve cleared and test sanded a few sections of the decking and it cleans up pretty nice. I’ll take some pictures of the nice parts and the mammoth stampede.
So, to be done….
- Finish prep on starboard lower deck, blow out with air gun, vacuum and acetone, mask – about 1/2 a day
- Run the Caulk – 14-16 person hours
- Spot clean and sand all the areas that deck hard ware goes
- Re-attach deck hardware to ensure there are no leaks as the cover deteriorates and is removed
- Remove Cover (Optional at this point, can’t be done before)
- Chisel / scrape excess caulk off deck (Guess? 20 Hours)
- Round sand to remove excess caulk
- Spot sand where machines can’t get to to finish the sanding
- Replace missing bungs
- Re-install any other deck hardware (self tapping sort, not through deck)
- Never, ever, ever allow a caustic teak cleaner or stiff brush near my teak again.
Time & labor estimates on the chisel scraping and sanding? Tough to tell, though those steps are a lot less labor intensive than the teak prep. I was able to chisel scrap almost half the upper deck on the starboard side in about two hours the other day.
So there’s a lot of work left, but the end is at least in sight. I’m hoping I can put a full on press and get it done mid May, hopefully. Assuming I can keep all my limbs working…
