Teak sealers or not (Mediterranean conditions)

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cmedsailor

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This is a question for people having their boat in the Mediterranean (or other similar hot places) as it has to do with how you protect and maintain the teak in a good condition under the sunny and hot Mediterranean weather.
Are you using any sealers (Semco, teak wonder etc)? Can you recommend any specific one? Anyone to avoid? Avoid all probably?
Any alternative method to protect it such as washing regularly with soap/teak cleaners/salt water....? Yes a cover would have been the best alternative but this is just impossible.
I see my teak cockpit and teak toe rail after one year not only turning grey (which is natural) but also the wood surface, especially of the exposed toe rail, becoming rough and i feel that I need to do something to protect it.
Thanks
 
You will get at least as many views on this matter as for anchors, if not more.
Personally, I'm also firmly in the "do nothing" camp, and I fully agree with duncan.
With just one additional suggestion: use the soft brush STRICTLY across the planks, not along them.
I know it can be a pita in some areas - typically along the walkarounds.
But brushing teak longitudinally is a recipe for making it rough/ridgy over time, no matter how gently you use your brush.
 
Whatever you put on the teak, the sun will attack it. Wash the teak with sea water to pickle the wood and every few days, wash off with fresh water; no brushing, just soft cloth if need.
 
I would never use a brush on teak, only a sponge. If the teak is ridged, it may be beneficial to give it a gentle sanding to smooth the surface. I've found that Boracol is a good treatment for teak, it stops any mould spots (which are often mistaken for dirt) and reduces the need for cleaning. I've used Semco on a cockpit table (in the UK) and it seems to be quite durable. If you're tempted to try Semco, I'd recommend you use the Natural colour sealer.
 
Salt water for me. I use a long-handled sponge very sparingly, across the grain. Everyone stepping on the boat changes or scrubs their shoes; I do possess a deck brush and it's used for shoes, not the deck.
 
We use Semco. About every three months we give it a coat. Its oily so helps maintain some of the oil in the surface of the wood where it would otherwise dry out in the sun. We have tried other products but this one works well for us in the Caribbean.
We use the NATURAL version. A bit like painting tea on to your teak
 
No treatment at all will work for a while but the softer parts of the wood are being eroded constantly. My toe and hand rails had originally been varnished but after about 2003 I stripped the varnish off and left them. By about 2015 so much of the wood had eroded that the teak plugs over the screws would not stay in. Handrails in particular are visibly smaller than they were, by comparison with the interior ones that were the same size. Since then I have Woodskinned them, doesn't take long and gives good protection.

This is not ours but shows quite clearly what happens with no treatment.
 
Well it takes some trick to keep that colour, I reckon.
In absence of any treatment, just some weeks after a sanding, the surface is bound to turn greyish.
And that surface is pretty far from looking freshly sanded...
 
I think any teak you bought in the last 15 years or so is not the same quality as that which was available 40 years ago. Our aft deck and cockpit comings are original at 40 years old and are still in excellent condition. Thr high traffic areas of deck wore out and were removed 4 years ago. New teak on the cockpit floor is not as dense as the original teak and not as oily. Treating it with Semco definitely helps ours
 
I prefer grp. I've had my share of wooden boats and don't want one in the sun, neither deck nor hull.
I like the look of wood and am glad that there are masochists :)
 
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MapisM said:
Well it takes some trick to keep that colour, I reckon.
In absence of any treatment, just some weeks after a sanding, the surface is bound to turn greyish.
And that surface is pretty far from looking freshly sanded...
Click to expand...
I doubt if it had been sanded for years. The boat was next to us in a yard in Aegina. Whatever colour you think you are seeing is a function of the sunlight, not treatment.
 
25931 said:
I prefer grp. I've had my share of wooden boats and don't want one in the sun, neither deck nor hull.
I like the look of wood and am glad that there are masochists :)
Click to expand...
Amen to that.
Funnily enough, I think you will find much more consensus on your view among boaters who actually owned a wooden boat.
A whopping 17 years in a row from my part, for instance!
And also now that I wittingly downgraded to a frozen snot boat, I could still make a long list of their advantages.
BUT, teak deck just doesn't happen to be one of them. :ROFLMAO:
 
vyv_cox said:
I doubt if it had been sanded for years. The boat was next to us in a yard in Aegina.
Whatever colour you think you are seeing is a function of the sunlight, not treatment.
Click to expand...
Agreed, it takes a while for the sunlight to turn untreated and unvarnished teak into its typical greyish colour.
When I said "some weeks", I had my Sardinian-based experience in mind.
But it if the teak in your pic didn't turn grey for years in Greece, I can only imagine that it must have been kept well covered practically all the time.
 
MapisM said:
Agreed, it takes a while for the sunlight to turn untreated and unvarnished teak into its typical greyish colour.
When I said "some weeks", I had my Sardinian-based experience in mind.
But it if the teak in your pic didn't turn grey for years in Greece, I can only imagine that it must have been kept well covered practically all the time.
Click to expand...
There is always the possibility that it is not teak at all but some other timber. Certainly was a rough old job.
 
Hard to tell just from a pic, but it does look teak to me.
Also the colour is actually right, if it weren't that over time it turns grey when left untreated.
But when freshly sanded or cut, that's indeed the natural teak colour.

Regardless, the builder should be ashamed of that job.
On top of being awful now that the screws are exposed, they also made the GRP deck underneath akin to Swiss cheese.
And if it has a sandwich construction (as is usually the case), more than likely it's completely soaked by now.
Unless the whole boat was kept sheltered/covered of course, which might explain also the fact that the teak didn't turn grey.

Good luck to the owner.
It's going to be a helluva job in any case, either for fitting new teak or just removing it and re-glassing the surface.
 
vyv_cox said:
There is always the possibility that it is not teak at all but some other timber. Certainly was a rough old job.
Click to expand...

Except of the gold colour and the ruined caulking (a sign I guess of unsuccessful attempts to protect/maintain the teak), the condition of this deck is unfortunately a very typical example of teak left for some years and without any proper protection under the hot Med sun.
The use of screws is another story. Used I am afraid by many boat builders. On my last boat I had to replace the teak in the cockpit because of the exposed screws.
 
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