Varnishing grabrails the easy way
Issue 84 : May/Jun 2012
It was time to give the four teak grabrails on the coach-roof of my 1985 Hunter 28.5 the full treatment. I must confess that, for several years, I had let them go and had not recoated them with Sikkens Cetol as I had planned. (I’m sure no one else has ever done this.) As you might imagine, they had become spotty, with some nice graying but also with streaks of clinging Cetol.
I don’t like to redo these babies on the boat because of the pain of taping around the bases and the inevitable hard- to-clean Cetol splatters that end up on the deck. So home they went for the full treatment, with the promise to myself that I would recoat them every six months — I really mean it this time!
Once I had removed the remaining Cetol and cleaned the teak, the grabrails were ready for the new treatment, this time with Cetol Light.
I didn’t relish the prospect of having to painstakingly coat one side of each grabrail, let it dry, flip it, coat the other side, and repeat — several times. As I contemplated how I might avoid that ordeal, I came up with an idea: why not simply re-use the screws that held the handrails to the cabintop?
Voilà! I ran the screws though a piece of plywood and into the grabrails, supporting them a couple of inches above the surface so I could coat them on top, left, and right all at once. Brilliant!
The job went as planned and is now completed. I’ll do it again in six months. Really.
Ferman Wardell began sailing an 11-foot Styrofoam Snark on a 30-acre lake in North Carolina. He later owned a 12-foot Scorpion, a San Juan 21, and now Wind-Borne, a 1985 Hunter 28.5, which he cruises and races on Lake Norman near Charlotte, N.C. He has sailed extensively in the Caribbean. Ferman enjoys doing boat maintenance, repairs, and “improvements.”
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
