Decks

Arione is not a new boat. She's well past old enough to vote and could get a drink if she had the ability to order one. She has teak decks. Teak decks that were, regrettably, but standard for the time she was built, fastened with approximately five million screws through the balsa cored fiberglass nonskid decks that were molded into the boat for people who didn't want teak. Of whom there were very few, judging from the messages I've read on the Mason mailing list over the past 10 years. Most people with these boats have either dealt with their decks or are wondering how they will deal with them. We've known since we bought her that at some point, the decks were going to be an issue.

We figured at some point we'd have to replace the teak decks with painted nonskid. Which would have been functional, but a little sad. This is a boat that wants pretty decks, and paint is not particularly pretty. What we didn't know was that we were going to be in La Paz, where there is a guy who specializes in redoing teak decks. He took us around and showed us a lot of his work on other boats. It's beautiful. Bonus - he glues the teak down. There will be screws and bungs in the edge pieces, but that is something like 95% fewer screws into the deck than we have now.

Replacing a teak deck is never going to be a bargain proposition, but he's doing it for us at a price we can afford. Art's going to help with the labor, and I'll inventory the hardware as it comes off, so that reduces the labor a bit. Through a local mailing list, we've found a short term rental that's not too dear.

The work starts Monday. We'll rent a car this weekend and move all of the stuff that needs to be off the boat into the rental. I'm psyched.