One thing about having a teak interrior to your boat is that it’s beautiful. Beautifully annoying that is. Although it’s nice to look at and adds character to the boat it takes rediculous amounts of time to maintain. Unfortunatley it’s not a wash-and-go surface. And it’s not that it’s a difficult project, in fact it’s amazingly easy. Wash with bleach water, clear off with clean water, rub down with teak oil, and wipe off the excess. I don’t know how it could get any more simple. This is a project I could ask my six year old cousin to do, but I won’t. The real pain of it all is that it’s so excruciatingly tedious. Work on one section, move a foot to your right. Work on that section, move a foot to your right. Repeat, repeat, repeat. And it’s not just the walls that are teak. Oh how I wish it were just the walls. It’s also the boards under the sette, the cupboards, the trim, and basically everything from eye level down on the boat. This required a lot of bending, twisting, and general acrobatics to reach spots, especially in the aft cabin. I’m pretty sure the people from Cirque du Soliel will me calling me soon to offer me a position. Luckily the whole bleach and rinse process only needs to be done every 1-2 years, so now I can forget about it for a looong time. The oiling will need to be done every few months, but since it’s only 1/3 of the process it won’t be so bad.
On a side note, let me publicly state that, yes Matt, you were right about the importance of wearing rubber gloves while working with bleach water. I had decided to take mine off after ten minutes working because they kept sliding down my hands and the walls were being washed with paper towel that was being blocked by nubs of rubber glove. But then it only tooke me fifteen minutes with the gloves off before my fingers started to crack and bleed. I was warned, but stupid (unexperienced?) enough not to listen. The gloves went back on. Matt, I promise I will listen to you more. Maybe.
With Matt still doing most of the work on the boat on Fridays with me not there, I can’t account for much else that has gone on this month. I tried to get him to dictate to me all the fun he had while I was gone, but that wasn’t going to happen. There is, however, a list of all the projects he has completed und the Projects tab if you’re curious.
So that’s it for now. After Easter has passed, Eldean’s will be open on Sundays, so we’ll be out here together a lot more and getting her ready to go in the water hopefully mid-May. Oh, and in my previous passage I had stated that I would never have any fun out here until Serendipity was in the water, but on a sunny and pleasant Saturday when Matt and I were out here he deemed me usless for a few hours (there really was zero for me to do), and I was able to enjoy a nice stroll out to the Holland light house. I really hope I’ll be able to prove myself wrong again.