Laying an artificial teak deck

When we bought Elisabeth, our Nautor’s Swan 43ft ketch, in 2006 she was already nearly 30 years old. At the time we bought her the deck had just been repaired, sanded and oiled. It did not appear to be a problem as it looked beautiful.

The rest of the boat was immaculate, we were delighted with her and felt this was the boat for us. Elisabeth is a roomy family cruiser with classic Swan lines and a comfortable layout. A haul out to see her bottom, a perfect test sail around a couple of the Croatian Islands and we were asking where to sign.

The deck on Elisabeth is a feature of the boat; 22m² of the finest Burmese teak running the full length of the boat. When it was in good repair the deck would turn heads. I have spent many evenings admiring it after a day spent tidying the teak up, touching up the caulking, sanding and replacing screws and plugs.

Unfortunately the time spent admiring decreased over time, and the time spent on hands and knees trying not to tread in the sticky lines of caulking increased a lot.

The beginning of the end came when we sailed up from the Med to the UK in 2011. We spent a couple of years around the south-west coast of the UK. This proved to be a disaster for the deck. The wet weather and lower temperatures started to attack the deck, causing the now ancient polysulfide adhesive to lose its grip and the caulking to break up and perish. I started to lose ground against the elements as I lifted parts of the deck