More to the Point

In the continuing saga of the fogged varnish we left off last Tuesday with weather frustration.  Fog had rolled in and ruined my plans to repair the work that had been damaged by dew.  On Friday I got back to it.  I went over it again with 180 grit paper, wiped it down and crossed my fingers.  I had checked the weather and found that temperatures were going to be hovering right around 40 degrees F.  That's not really ideal varnishing weather and I had heard reports that you don't want to lay down a coat if it's colder than 50 out.  Well, that may be but I'm feeling kinda desperate here, mightily pressed for time and I'm concerned that if I don't get a few more coats on then the long cold winter will destroy what I've already done.  The whole point of doing the teak this Fall was to reduce the amount of work that I'll have to do next March.  So I gave this some thought and figured I wouldn't have much to lose if it didn't work out.  What really pushed me on was the fact that the dew point on Friday was at 17 degrees F and was supposed to stay more than 20 degrees below the air temperature all day.  I had read somewhere that this was the magic formula, 20 degrees of separation.

I got started at 1100 when the air temperature got above 40 and finished by 1400.  I was just finishing up the bowsprit when I realized I couldn't hold the brush any longer.  I pushed on and finished but  I was shivering uncontrollably and babbling like an idiot.  Hey, be nice! Got my brush cleaned up and called it a day.  It took me until that evening to finally thaw out.

That night I had nightmares about ruined varnish and stripping down teak in the snow.  I finally rolled out of bed around 0600 but it was still dark out, too dark to see if the teak had survived.  Finally around 0730 I went out and checked it out.  It came out fine.  The 20 degree magic formula worked.  I can't describe how relieved I was.  The surface was still kinda tacky so I decided to leave it alone, let it cure completely.  Rain was called for on Sunday so I was pretty much done with varnish for the weekend.

I sat out in the cockpit for a few hours with a heating pad under my butt and polished and installed two more stanchions.  This completes the re-bedding on the port side.  The four other stanchions on that side were done last week so I ran a razor blade around the bases of those and cleaned them up.  They came out looking pretty good.  The next coat of varnish will help to seal the bases but I wouldn't get that done before the next rain so I covered them over with masking tape.  Be a bummer to have the teak turn black after all this work.

Next weekend the forecast is not prime for Friday but I may be able to get another coat of varnish done on Saturday.  The air temperature will be around 41 but the dew point will be way down at 13.  It'll be like that for most of the day so there should be enough time to lay down another coat and have it start to set before the conditions deteriorate.  Perfect!

I still need to order the stainless wire for the life-lines but I do have the tubing and fittings for the hard railing around the cockpit.  Maybe I'll get started on that next Friday.

Since this teak project has taken over my life I've been re-thinking my goals.  I had wanted to get eight coats on but realistically five would get me through the winter.  I've got four coats on already down the port side and across the stern.  There's three from the stern up to the side gate and two coats from there up to the bowsprit.  I'm pretty sure I can get five coats on all around before I turn into a pop sickle.  Then next March I'll be able to lay down three more to finish it up while the boat's out of the water for fresh bottom paint.

Once I have five coats on I can move on to something else.  For this winter I have a few things at the top of the priority list.  I want to install some cabinets in the aft stateroom along the hull on the port side.  We have a ten inch wide shelf there above the bunk that would serve very nicely as a support for a "wall hung" type cabinet and then on the aft bulkhead I want to mount another for storing tools. We priced having custom cabinets made when we re-did the galley but for these two small cabinets they wanted $5k.  Yeah, I know, custom work and all that.  I'm still not willing to do that, even if we did have the money.  I looked around on-line and found that Home Depot has a very nice maple cabinet selection (click here) and you can get cabinet faces that have just the face frame with doors and hinges.  I figure I could use these and build some "custom" cabinets of my own.  The frames and doors are solid wood with the recessed inner door panel being the only part that has MDF.  It comes in a nice cinnamon stain that kinda resembles the color of our teak.  Where these cabinets are going the only folks who'll be seeing them will be Bella or the occasional guest.  Total cost for the cabinets will be less than $600.

Once I have the cabinets installed then I can get back to work on the water maker.  That is the ultimate goal for this winter, to have that installed and running by February of '15.  That's like, what, three months. My project history shows that to be about three months short.  We'll see how it goes.

What's the Point?

Here it is more than three weeks since I began refinishing the teak and I'm still not anywhere near being done.  The varnish takes a full 24 hours in between coats and time becomes a major factor.  We have four good coats on the Port side, three across the stern but only two on the Starboard side.  I only have weekends for this and weather has been a problem.  Between the rain and cold/damp weather I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle.

This past weekend I had five full days to play.  I'm normally off Friday through Sunday and Veterans Day fell on a Tuesday so I took Monday off to take advantage of a streak of nice weather.  Friday through Sunday were clear but the temperatures barely got above 50 degrees.  Friday and part of Saturday I sanded and cleaned the teak on the Starboard side from the bowsprit back to the gate near the cockpit.  I got one coat of varnish down late in the afternoon and it looked good.  Sunday I had to wait until later in the afternoon to lay down a second coat because it was still a bit tacky.  I added a coat across the stern while I waited.  I finished the starboard side coat by 1600 and called it a day.  Monday I got up early and went out to see how things looked.  All the varnish I had laid down on Sunday was fogged and patchy looking.  All of it.  Ugh!  I envisioned having to strip everything back down to bare wood and starting all over again.  I'm running out of time though and really cold weather is right around the corner.

I Googled "fogged varnish" and found that it's caused by the varnish not having enough time to "flash off" and dry before dew settles on it.  According to Wikipedia "The dew point is the saturation temperature for water in air. The dew point is associated with relative humidity. A high relative humidity implies that the dew point is closer to the current air temperature. Relative humidity of 100% indicates the dew point is equal to the current temperature and that the air is maximally saturated with water".  When varnishing, the dew point must be at least 20 degrees less than the air temperature or you're gonna have problems.  At least that's what I read.  On Sunday the air temperature was around 51 degrees and I suspect the dew point was around 40 or higher.  I read on and found that the finish can be saved by scuffing the surface to allow the trapped moisture to evaporate.  Of course this requires warm temperatures.  Fortunately the temperatures for Monday and Tuesday were forecast to be in the 60's and clear.  Perfect!

Monday morning Cheri and I talked ourselves into stripping down the teak on the cockpit coaming so everything would be done at the same time.  I sanded down my fogged varnish and let it sit all day while we worked on the coaming.  I figured things would be perfect by Tuesday for laying down a coat of varnish and having everything protected before bad weather settled in around the middle of the week.  While Cheri sanded the coaming I worked on re-bedding the stanchions.

Before laying down any varnish on the Port side I had taped off the areas where the stanchions mount.  Now with four coats down I had to run a blade around the edge of the tape to remove it but underneath I found clean and bare wood.  Next I taped off the same spot and re-traced the base of the stanchion.  This time I removed the tape inside the cut and left the outer area covered.  Now when I install the stanchion the sealant can ooze out onto the tape and not ruin my beautiful teak.  Cheri had already polished up four of the stanchions and had them ready to go.  I squeezed 5200 adhesive all over the bottom of the base and up inside the stanchion a few inches, ran the bolts into place and lightly screwed them into position with just enough pressure to have the sealant push out all around the stanchion base.  I wanted to let the adhesive cure first before going back and tightening them down all the way to get a really good seal.  With Cheri's help I got all four stanchions re-bedded.  Once we get the rest of the stanchions installed I'll replace the life lines. We've decided to go with bare stainless wire instead of the white plastic coated stuff.  We're also replacing the life lines around the cockpit with hard stainless railing.  I have all the parts I need for that on hand so that project is ready to take off.  The hard railing will make a better place to mount our grill and the table we use for cleaning fish.  We'll be able to sit on our newly refinished teak coaming (maybe on a towel or something) and cook up that Mahi-mahi we just caught.  Can't wait!


Tuesday I had some touch-up sanding to do on the coaming so I took care of that before starting the varnish.  It was still kinda chilly out and after suffering the fogged varnish I wanted to wait for things to warm up a little more anyway.  Around 1000 I was ready to go at it and collected my brush and can of varnish and headed for the bowsprit.  I just happened to glance out towards the breakwater and discovered a wall of fog quickly descending on our creek.  Fog = high dew point, maximum saturation, 100% humidity.  Grrrrrrr.  I can't believe this!  I put away my varnishing gear and moved on to my next project.  Unfortunately I may be done with varnishing for quite a while.  Winter is coming on strong and temperatures are projected to be in the low 40's and 30's for at least the next week.  If I could just get a few more coats on it'd probably be OK for the Winter but I think even that's gonna be a challenge.

So.....my next project was having the anchors galvanized.  Last week I took them into Baltimore Galvanizing which is located in a heavily industrialized area near Essex.  They had a minimum charge of $250 but I couldn't get them to divulge whether that was for weight or volume or what.  I figured I could get a few other boat owners to go in on it with me and we could split the cost.  This is a bad time of year to inspire folks to galvanize their anchors though.  Seems that most everyone is concentrating on getting their boats pulled and having them winterized.  OK, so $250 is still not so bad.  That's about what I'd pay for new anchors and it doesn't make sense to just throw them out and replace them with pretty ones.  I can get my 20' of chain on the Danforth re-done at the same time.  The shop called me on Monday and said they were ready to be picked up.  I drove out there on Tuesday in the fog and loaded them in the trunk.  I talked to the dude for a few minutes about the cleaning process.  He said they acid dip them first, fresh water rinse and then put them in the galvanizing bath.  He said the chain took two days in the acid bath because it had paint on it and they need it to be bare steel for the galvanizing to work properly.  I asked about the minimum charge and he said it really depended on the job, the size of the parts, weight, etc.  He thought I coulda thrown in a few more anchors though, no problem.  The anchors and chain look brand new.  I'm really pleased with the results and feel it was money well spent.  Now we'll see how long it lasts and if I still feel the same way in another year or two.

So, here we are.  We're making progress here and there, even if it's not as much as I had hoped for.  Even if the varnish project is stalled I can continue to work on the stanchions and railing.  My project list intrudes on my sleep almost every night but if I keep chiseling away at it I can keep it at bay.  I have a plan.  The ultimate goal is to get the water maker installed this Winter.  To do that I need to install some cabinets in the aft cabin to make room for the stuff located where I want to put the high pressure pump.  The cabinets will also make a spot for our tools which in turn will open up some more storage around the boat.  I have about three months to get these things done and install a single side band radio too.  Should be do-able.  Then next March we'll pull the boat, repaint the bottom and finish up the teak.  Then splash and run.  That'll be it.