The future is getting brighter

The varnished wood is called "brightwork."

After what seems like (and actually is) months and months of indecision and depression, I am back at work on Ayala. Of all the options open to me at this point, the one in common to all of them is that I want to have Ayala looking in top shape.

 

Which brings me to the subject of brightwork. Ayala doesn't have as much of it as I would like. For the non-nautical reader, let me explain brightwork. Simply put, it is varnished wood. In the picture to the right, the gray wood is not varnished. The white areas are painted. The parts that look like wood are varnished and are known as brightwork. Usually brightwork refers to the woodwork on deck rather than in the cabin.

Chatelaine - an all wood boat built in Denmark in the early 60's

Before I continue, I should digress and explain that I started sailing in the late 60's when there were still lots of wooden boats around. I have always loved the look and feel and smell of a wooden boat. My first boat, Chatelaine, was an elegant wooden boat built in Denmark. Living aboard Chatelaine was like living in a home built of Danish furniture - simple, elegant, some parts were painted, much of it was varnished. My next boat, Laelia, was a more typical modern design - lots of white fiberglass with only minimal wood trim. It never had the comfortable feeling for me that I had living aboard Chatelaine.

Nowadays, it is hardly practical to own and operate a wooden boat unless one has a lot of money or has lots of experience maintaining a wooden boat and has the time to do the work. For me, Ayala is the best compromise between old and new. She is a fiberglass boat with a lot of wood both on deck and below. She has much of the feel of a wooden boat without some of the major headaches of an all wood boat.

Lots of gray, weathered teak in this picture

She also has more upkeep than an all fiberglass boat but for me, it is well worth the effort. It is the difference between living in an elegant home and living in a plastic bottle.

The most commonly used wood above decks in a modern sailboat is teak. Teak is a relatively soft wood but it has a high oil content and it is gritty. This means that it stands up well to the weather and it is an excellent non-skid surface in the areas where I walk on it. Much of the deck on Ayala has a teak overlay. It is left unfinished – not coated with varnish – to retain its non-skid properties. As the teak ages, it turns gray. There are two schools of thought about the gray. I think it is beautiful. Others think it looks shabby. Perhaps part of the beauty in my eye is the knowledge that the gray teak is traditional for decks. That's the way it looked on the old sailing ships and it is the way it is kept on many high quality (expensive) yachts.

However, most of us would agree that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Contrasting trim enhances the beauty of the gray teak. Teak that is kept varnished does not turn gray. It has a rich, dark brown appearance that is equally as beautiful.

At different times, the previous owners of Ayala have gone both the low-maintenance route with all

of the teak left bare and the higher maintenance route of varnishing the trim. At the point where I bought her, most of the trim was left bare and had turned gray. The immediate previous owner had started to have the trim varnished but only got as far as finishing the trim in the cockpit area. The first picture shows the extent of the brightwork when I bought Ayala. It is a start, but there is much more to be done.

I started with weathered teak looking like this.

So, at long last, I started on the job of sanding and varnishing trim. It promises to be a lot of work but I quickly found that the combination of sun and the fact of actually accomplishing something were quite energizing. I started by sanding off as little of the teak as possible to get past the weathered gray layer. As another boat owner observed, “Teak doesn't grow on boats.” Every time a bit of teak is turned to sanding dust, it is lost and it is very expensive to replace. Teak has been such a popular tropical hardwood for long enough that it is becoming a species threatened with extinction. When one can find teak, it is often not good quality or is not properly aged and dried to be suitable for boat use. I have to accept that the result of my labors will contain some amount of weathered wood fibers unless I am willing to spend lots of money to replace some of the teak – not to mention being willing to accept the environmental impact.



The light tan wood is sanded teak. This is pretty close to the
color of the original teak.

Still, even the lightly sanded teak is an attractive contrast to the weathered teak (see left). Once it is varnished, it turns still darker as you can see in the picture below.

Teak after the first coat of varnish.

But this, my friends, is only the beginning. The first coat of varnish is 50% varnish and 50% thinner. This makes the vanish thin enough that it soaks into the wood. The vanish manufacturer recommends a second coat of 50% solution, a third coat of 75% varnish, a fourth coat of 90% varnish followed by a minimum of four coats of 90 – 100% varnish. An additional two coats are recommended for wood exposed to tropical sun conditions. As best I can figure, there is about two month's worth of work to get to that level – weather conditions permitting.

Weather conditions? Oh yeah, I neglected to mention that the varnishing has to be done under certain conditions. It has to be sunny. It has to be warm – 65 degrees or better. It has to stay sunny and warm long enough for the varnish to harden – about four hours. At this time of year in Alameda, CA, that means that I can't start applying varnish until close to 11 AM and it has to be finished by 1 PM. If the air turns cool and damp before the varnish is hardened, it turns milky and has to be sanded down to the previous coat before continuing.

As of today, I have applied the first coat to the starboard cap rail. I have sanded the port cap rail and the rub rails on both sides. The cap rail is the rail that caps the edge of the deck. The rub rail runs along most of the side about half way between the cap rail and the water line. The name describes the function that it servers when a ham-handed skipper bumps into the side of the slip while docking.

An additional complication is the presence of detail work in the trailboards. There are trailboards port and starboard at the bow and at the stern for a total of four. The dark parts of the picture to the right are a raised design. In this picture, the background teak is sanded but not varnished. In the picture below it, you can see that the painted design does not stand out well against the darker, varnished teak. (The blue stripe is masking tape - not a permanent feature.)

 

As best I can figure, the way to deal with this situation is to apply most of the coats of varnish – perhaps all but the last two – then paint the raised portion with a contrasting color. The most likely candidate is gold paint. It contrasts well with the darker teak, it is traditional and it looks quite elegant when done properly. This will be a challenge given that I am artistically handicapped.

Producing good brightwork is both a satisfying art and an act of masochism. I am counting on the satisfaction in producing beautiful brightwork to outweigh the pain. Stay tuned for the results. More pictures and commentary will follow.