Preserving Elegance of the Teak Deck Is Tough Duty

A man on the dock the other day was curious about what I was doing. I explained that I was rescrewing and replugging the deck. He was a welcome excuse to stand and stretch my aching muscles. It also gave me the opportunity to complain to somebody.

I was tired of complaining to myself about screws that wouldn’t back out without shearing off. I told the man about that, and about having to drill out the part of the screw left in the hole, and about my sore back and knees, and about how messy epoxy glue is, and about three-eighth-inch teak plugs that split wrong when I chiseled them off . . .

The man’s eyes began to glaze.

His real interest was in finding a 27-foot Cheoy Lee offshore sloop just like my Herald Bird. It seems he’d been admiring her from afar. I invited him for an inspection of the cabin arrangement. Then I blocked the companionway so he couldn’t get out until I finished my harangue.

The gist of it was I advised him against buying a used boat like the bird with a teak deck that needed refastening. I told him that the late L. Francis Herreshoff, who had designed the offshore 27 for Cheoy Lee shipyard, hadn’t followed his own advice about the practicality of a painted canvas deck.

I told him that if I had to do over, I’d buy a boat with a fiberglass painted deck that I wouldn’t have to replug and seams that didn’t need recaulking.

From his next remark I could tell the poor man was suffering from starry-eyed romanticism. Obviously he’d never owned a boat with a teak deck that seems to need scrubbing and bleaching every time you turn around, and then begins to pop plugs because you’ve scrubbed and bleached so many times over the years that you’ve worn the wood down.

“Oh,” says the man, “but a deck like that looks so elegant.”

I had to agree. Elegant it looks, but impractical it is. I let the guy escape then, which he did readily enough, and I wished him luck in his search for a little ship like mine with an elegant teak deck.

My friend Jay Greer, who has refastened and replugged more wooden decks than I care to think about, has been my mentor on my project. One of his most valuable pieces of advice was the use of an engraver’s chisel or graver.

You use the graver to clean out the hole and the slot of the old screw before inserting a screw driver to back it out. If you damage the slot while trying to remove the screw, the graver is just the tool to deepen the slot. Believe me, you’ll get plenty of use out of the graver, for more slots end up being damaged than not.

After removing the old screw, drill the hole deeper, insert a new screw, then glue a new plug in. After you finish the deck, you then have the questionable pleasure of sanding it down.

I’m about 75% done on the Bird’s deck. I’m forced to admit it’s starting to look pretty elegant. But I’m halting work for a weekend at Catalina Island. After all, elegance can be carried to excess.

Sailing Notes

- Dr. Alan Andrews, vice commodore of the Balboa Yacht Club, has warned in the club’s magazine, Talewind, of not swimming in Balboa Bay on weekends, and “possibly not on Monday mornings in summer.” He says, “We don’t really know the exact causes of the pollution, but we do know that it exists, and that we can no longer dismiss it as being due to the birds or to anxieties raised by wild-eyed environmentalists.

“The evidence is overwhelming that there are times during the summer . . . that our bay is polluted by bacteria and viruses from mammalian (animals like us and our dogs and cats) origin.”

Dr. Andrews believes that some of the pollution is caused by the silting in of the bay. Because it is shallower, deposits on the bottom are more easily stirred up by surface activities.

Boaters, he says, probably will be blamed for the pollution, regardless of their innocence. He urges boaters to be careful to avoid any question of blame by not discharging any sewage into the bay, along with trash, fuel, paints or thinners.

He predicts an increasing pollution problem. Therefore, all boaters should be “careful to make it quite clear that the responsible boating population is making an effort to avoid and prevent problems.”

- “Beer Can” late afternoon sailboat races are now being held Thursdays during the summer in Newport Harbor.

- The Mariners, a Sea Explorer team from Dana Point, has placed in the first division of a recent statewide competition, the Ancient Mariner Regatta, in San Francisco, for the second year in a row, according to team adviser Jim Wehan. The team demonstrated skill in an array of seamanship events against 41 competing teams.