IS-THAT-REAL-WOOD

With his teak decks in need of replacement, Mike Rothery decides to tackle the job himself

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Our Princess 67 is now in her thirteenth year. We have always tried to keep her looking like new but wooden teak decks can let the overall impression of the boat down. Teak gets dirty and the only way to clean it properly is to use the proprietary two-part cleaners that are available on the market. Some people will tell you that simply throwing a bucket of seawater over wooden teak decks cleans them. In my view this does very little and there is no substitute for the hard work that is needed to keep teak decks looking like new. The big problem is that after a few years of cleaning wooden teak decks with the two-part cleaners, the thickness deteriorates until there is very little of the actual wood left.

Our bathing platform was the first to go so three years ago we had the wood replaced with synthetic teak. There are always advantages and disadvantages in everything you do and installing synthetic teak is no exception. In the early days, synthetic teak looked false but these days, the products on offer look so good that it is hard to distinguish them from real wood. The only disadvantage is that synthetic teak can get very hot in the sunshine. That doesn’t mean wood teak doesn’t get hot, just that synthetic teak gets hotter. For me, though, the biggest benefit is the ability to keep it looking clean with very little effort.

At the end of last year, the remaining wooden teak areas of the boat were looking sad so we decided to embark on a plan to replace the rest of