Our boat is loaded with brightwork (teak and wood trim), and we still love it. We fully appreciate that this opinion is not shared by most boaters today, most of whom prefer lower-maintenance (it’s never maintenance-free!) fiberglass. But our boat looks good — she’s a salty old lady who likes to show off her bling. And that’s one of the reasons we love her.
Owning a Cabo Rico has been a crash course in teak care. We knew a little bit going in, but we know a whole lot more after six years of ownership.
This article isn’t geared toward helping experienced boaters find the perfect coating. There are plenty of those articles out there, and every boater has a different opinion.
Instead, this article is to help beginners, folks who are looking for easy and low-maintenance ways to keep it looking good. We’ll weigh the pros and cons of different types of coatings, but we’ll let you decide which one is right for your vessel.
Why Do Boats Have Teak?
I’m using teak as a generic term because that was the most common wood used for trim pieces on most “classic plastic” boats from the 70s and 80s. By the time the 90s rolled around, many brands had decided to omit the teak and replace the wood trim with something easier to care for, like more plastic. If you look at the deck of the modern Beneteau or Catalina, you won’t see any wood trim at all. Even “teak” decking today is usually made of plastic.
But real teak still has a lot going for it. It’s an oily wood that resists rot extremely well. In many instances, it can be left natural or covered with shiny, glossy coatings for that bristol, yacht-club, boat-show finish.
Teak is also reasonably easy to repair; it’s easy to come across more of it, and any cabinetmaker or good boatyard should be able to repair it to like-new condition after an incident. You can usually find scraps of nice-quality teak at marine consignment shops. Fiberglass can be repaired, too, but it’s a bigger ordeal.
The Lie That Teak Requires “A Lot” of Maintenance
Nearly all boaters we meet think that we’re slaves to our teak, that it must consume all our time. We’ve lost count of the snide comments other boaters make about it.
But the truth is, it isn’t that big a deal. And I’m saying that as a guy who drives a Cabo Rico, which is utterly and completely loaded with teak.
Here’s the thing: All parts of a boat require maintenance. If you skip the maintenance for a while, you make more work for yourself in the future. Teak just makes you realize that fact faster than most other parts of the boat.
Fiberglass hulls, decks, and no-skid need to be cleaned, compounded, and waxed once or twice a year.
Stainless steel fittings need to be cleaned and polished regularly. Hardware needs to be rebedded.
Everything needs washed occasionally. Bottoms need painted and occasionally stripped and barrier coated.
Stainless rigging needs to be regularly inspected, scrubbed of salt and rust spots, waxed or treated every year or so, replaced every decade, and tuned for every season.
The list goes on…there is no maintenance-free surface in boating.
So, for us, teak is just another chore on an already long list. But, if you don’t love having the teak, then don’t buy a boat with it — you’ll only resent it in the end.
Methods of Caring for Boat Woodwork (Exterior)
No matter what kind of wood your boat has (or how much), you have two choices: Leave it bare or use a clear coating.
Starting Steps: Stripping and Cleaning Your Teak
All teak maintenance starts with a simple washing with boat soap, cleaning it like the rest of your boat and deck. Scrub with a soft or medium brush; don’t get aggressive. The goal is to get suds that will clean out all the grime occasionally.
Before you can use a new product or change your maintenance habit, you need to start with teak that has no coating at all and is completely clean.
When removing old coatings, finding the least destructive method is imperative. Attacking it with a power sander is your last option, because it’s easy to gouge the wood and take off much more than just the old coatings.
If you leave the wood out in the sun long enough, all the old coatings will eventually flake off. Once it starts to flake, it will come off easily with a detail scraper (shop on Amazon) and a little elbow grease.
Coatings in better shape can be attacked with a good heat gun (shop on Amazon) and the same scraper.
Once you’ve got most of the coating off, you can give it a quick scuff with sandpaper by hand. You don’t need to be aggressive here either; working your way from 180 to 320 grit is usually sufficient.
Once you’ve sanded it smooth, it’s time to wash it. There are teak cleaning kits available at West Marine that will get the teak looking bright and new. We’ve found that Barkeepers Friend (BKF) Soft Scrub has the same ingredients, is very effective, and is much cheaper. If you wanted the best possible finish, I might pop for the proper cleaners. Spend the time necessary to wash and clean the teak so that the color is even with no dark spots, grime, or mold left.
We apply the BKF using a small, medium bristle brush and lots of water. Scrubbing against the grain, the key is to build up a good amount of suds and bubbles and spread it around evenly. Once it has sat on the wood for a few minutes, wash it off with lots of fresh water before it dries. Let it dry in the sun, and the teak will become lighter in color. You’ll probably also be shocked at how much dirt you washed off. You can scrub and wash again to keep lightening it up, if you need to.
Treating Bare Teak on a Boat
There are several places where I don’t use varnish or clear coats on teak. If you have teak decks, like our cockpit, the varnish wears quickly and makes it slippery when wet. I much prefer decks to be left bare. We also have a teak grate covering the bow locker, which I think looks better left bare.
You might leave all your teak bare, which is an option in most cases. Unfinished teak will turn a lovely silver-grey color in the sun, given enough time. Scrubbing it down regularly with saltwater is the old sailor’s trick for keeping it looking great.
But bare teak does not mean maintenance-free teak — there are still some steps to take and some products that will keep it looking better longer. If you leave it bare, you’ll want to repeat the steps above to clean it occasionally. Cleaning the teak will remove the silver-grey color and restore it to the slightly red-hued, light wood color of natural teak.
Once you’ve cleaned the teak, it’s a good idea to treat it with teak oil to replace some of the oils in the wood that you’ve washed out. This protects it, and putting the oil on is fast and easy. You can paint it on with a chip brush in a matter of minutes. Just be sure to wipe drips off of the fiberglass, which they can stain.
Instead of using regular oil, I like to treat our teak decks and trim with a sealer. This product goes on easily like oil, but it also contains UV protectants. It holds its color well and stays looking great for a year or more after application. Semco is a popular brand of sealers, but I like TotalBoat’s Danish Teak Sealer (shop on Amazon).
Glossy Teak — Varnishes and Other Clear Coatings for Boat Teak
There are some cases where it’s best to protect the teak in every way possible. For example, our cap rail (atop the hull-to-deck joint) is made of two pieces with a seam in the middle. Leaving it bare would allow the seam material to dry out and possibly let water get under the wood. Putting a clear coat on it seals both the wood and the seam.
The main reason for a clear coat is for aesthetics — a bright, shiny coat looks great when it’s new. Once you’ve got a high-quality coat on the wood, it’s not hard to keep it looking great so long as you apply a maintenance coat at least once a year.
So, the key to not becoming disgruntled with working on your teak is maintaining the habit of applying an annual maintenance coat. Once you leave it longer, and it begins to flake off, the only solution is to strip it all off and start again. And that’s too much work.
The classic coating is traditional varnish, but there’s a lot of confusion because now everyone calls all-clear coats “varnish.”
Varnish is a natural coating that soaks into the wood and expands as it heats and flexes. It goes on very thin and requires many, many coats — about eight — to get a good finish. It’s fickle stuff, sensitive to getting bubbles, and requires many hours between coats. It might take you a week or more to get it all on the first time at one coat a day.
There are many modern coatings that give you similar results with less work. Most are clear, glossy polyurethanes with extra UV inhibitors. It’s important to use marine coatings since regular hardware store products won’t have the same UV protection.
One of the best things about polyurethane coatings is their easy application: You can usually reapply another coat within two hours, allowing for multiple coats in one day. They’re also very easy to put down a maintenance coat. Simply clean the wood, scrub it with a Scotchbrite pad, and paint on another layer of the product.
Two-part polyurethanes are available, which provide a harder and longer-lasting coating, but they are costly and more challenging to apply and repair. Since part of the benefit of these modern coatings is to make putting a maintenance layer down easy, two-part coatings don’t make sense to me.
Cetol is a name brand of a unique coating that’s more like paint than other clear coats. It comes in a few colors, but they all have an orange tint. I was previously a fan of two coats of the Cetol Marine Teak color, followed by two coats of the Cetol Clear Gloss. It looked great at first, and it held up well with an annual recoat of the Clear Gloss. But, after a few years in the sun, it all took on an off-putting orange color.
My go-to product is currently a one-part polyurethane “spar varnish”: TotalBoat Gleam 2.0 (shop on Amazon). It’s very thin, but easy to apply. In two days, you can get six good coats on clean teak. And putting the annual maintenance coat on is just as easy; it can usually be done in a few hours.
Interior Wood Care
You have a lot more leeway when caring for your interior woodwork, because it’s generally safe from UV damage. Interior coatings can last a very long time, but still need some maintenance.
One of the biggest headaches with interior woodwork is figuring out what the manufacturer or the previous owner did. Mixing coating seldom looks good in the end, so it’s best to use the same products. Otherwise, you’re tasked with removing all the old stuff and putting on new stuff.
Bare, Oiled Wood
Many boats leave the wood bare and simply oil or seal it. This is a fine option, but unfinished wood will attract dust and grime quickly. On the inside of a boat, particularly one that’s stored over winter, it’s very nice to have a finished surface that you can easily wipe clean.
Bare wood is a magnet for mold and mildew. Putting oil on it just makes it all the stickier, in my experience.
Clear Wood Finishes Down Below
Many finishes can be used on interior wood, many of them borrowed from everyday woodworking and furniture making. It’s important to remember that these hard finishes do not have to be shiny. In fact, many interiors look better if only accents are coated with high-gloss finishes while the bulk of the floors and walls are satin.
Lacquer
Both our 1985 Cabo Rico and 2005 Lagoon had satin lacquer interiors. Manufacturers love this stuff because they can spray it on during the boat building process and it looks GOOD. It’s extremely hard, too, so it wears well.
Repairing it requires some research, however. You do not want to start putting other coatings on top of it. Both lacquer thinner and lacquer are widely available at hardware stores, but they are incredibly noxious. It’s not something you can really do while living on the boat, and you need lots of ventilation and fans.
The wonderful thing is, however, that lacquer is incredibly easy to work with once you get the hang of it. Most scuffs and scratches can be wiped out with a little lacquer thinner. Repairs are just as easy: By alternating wipes of thinner with thin coats of fresh lacquer, you can blend repaired areas into the original finish very quickly.
Two-Part Polyurethanes
Several things in our Cabo Rico came with two-part poly coatings. This exceptionally hard and glossy finish looks incredible, but it will eventually scratch or even chip. It’s nearly impossible to chemically remove, so it’s a job for many hours with a power sander. Once back to bare wood, you can refinish the piece however you like. I would pick something easier to repair, like whatever gloss finish you use on your exterior teak — you’ve already got some aboard, and I personally hate having too many different products lying around.
Standard “Varnishes”
If you’re starting from scratch, most other coatings inside can be whatever you use on the outside, but I personally prefer satin finishes down below. Nearly all varnishes come with both options. When starting with bare wood, most finish makers say to use 2-4 coats of gloss before top-coating with satin for the best appearance.
Refinishing the cabin sole requires a little extra planning, considering how much traffic it sees. Again, I opt for something easy to apply, easy to repair, and easy to apply maintenance coats. My current go-to is Total Boat Hyclon, which is a one-part poly finish. The satin looks good on the sole, and it could not be easier to work with. It has practically no fume factor and cleans up with water.
Learn to Love Your Teak
If there’s any one piece of parting advice I have, it’s simply to learn to love your teak. With just a little care and the right amount of balance between fun and chores, the teak will grow on you. It looks so much better than plastic, and it gives even the most bland white boats some character. And it harkens back to the days of sailing ships and real sailors.
The key is not to get bogged down in the chore. Clean it regularly and apply scheduled maintenance coats, and your teak finish will last a long time. And while you might dread painting on a coat of varnish, it sure beats changing toilet joker valves or standing on your head in the bilge, doesn’t it? Truth be told, it’s an easy, simple outdoor task on a boat in the sunshine, and it doesn’t get too much better than that.
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