The plan…. the teak has been removed from the deck, alongside all the deck fittings. This has revealed some “somewhat Lacey” deck beams that want replacing and some rather ropey teak. The course of action is to add in the new deck beams but with more of a camber to the deck – this is how it would have been originally and allows the water to more readily run off the deck, hopefully avoiding it all rolling towards the windows and making that soggy. Then we are having a new marine ply sub deck, on top of that will be much thinner planks of iroko/teak (probably about an inch) which will be glued down the the subdeck.

This avoids a lot of the previous problems of every seam and every bolt and every patchworked area of deck – and there was a bolt about every foot of length and six inches across the beam – being a potential point for water to come in. There won’t be all the soggy cotton caulking wicking any water along the seams. And it will look just as good, if not better. I’m not a purist when it comes to this project… let’s make use of modern glues and methods and come up with the most practical, achievable solution that will mean we can actually use the boat. Simples, and if this doesn’t work I’ll just cover the whole bloody thing in tek-dek, okay?