Our 1998 38 Ocean has had terrible, decaying, end-of-life decks for the 7 years we have owned it. Considering the boat has 26 years under the keel, it's no surprise that the teak on plywood laminated decks are done. From other posts here on the topic, removal can be somewhat intimidating. Allow me to share what we have been doing and will keep doing to eliminate the wood to recover the original nonskid.
First, a bit of background. We bought the boat with squishy decks. Then we decided it would be fun to live aboard. It was fun. And with a 19 year old boat on a deferred maintenance program there were things more important for our peaceful enjoyment than ripping up ugly decks that didn't leak.
We added a Espar hydronic heater, a Torrid Explorer 18 gallon 2x2 water heater, a Lewmar windlass with cockpit controls, a set of new Doyle sails with a stack pack, replaced parts of the fully enclosed cockpit canvas, cushions and bedding and most of the navigation system (redundantly), went through a couple of RIBs and outboards and Magma grills, purchased 275 feet of new Acco chain and a 20 kg Rocna anchor, (love it!) and somehow dumped over $30,000US into the Volvo engine/saildrive. Oh well, those were our project priorities.
Back to the low priority decking. My wife Sue suggested we take the slow path to removal and let nature provide free assistance. Her idea was to acknowledge that we were just not going to do it all in one season so why not learn from the areas that already failed and lifting up and encourage the same process: allow water to get under it and help to break the bonding seal. Again, our deck was failing/separating from the underlying nonskid and we wanted to preserve and use as-is the underlying nonskid. With a few hand tools we went around and lifted the edges around areas that were squishy and already separated and allowed the wet season in Seattle to leak in and do the rest.
It has been slow but steady work. In two years more than 3/4 of the decking has released or is easily coerced up with a few well placed wedges, a pry bar (aka Slim Jim or Wonder Bar), a claw hammer and a DeWalt 20V multitool: not much. In fact, the areas we opened to water last fall are coming right up today with little effort and clean but off colored nonskid under. We know from previous experience that the nonskid, if left to the elements of sun, rain, freeze, repeat, will self-clean to mostly clean white.
We have a theory. The Bavaria teak decks are a seven layer sandwich of teak, adhesive, three layers of plywood veneer and glue, followed by black polysulfide. Our goal was to get down below layer 2 thru six to that water could get down lower yet, causing dry rot, and other natural magic to occur. The real magic was found in having patience. Today I spent 3 hours and effectively removed 80% of the teak and 60% of the black polysulfide lifted with the teak, revealing intact nonskid, albeit a little dirty. Next week I'll come back with a belt sander loaded with a 40 grit belt and knock the remaining three ply plywood down, using the opposing grain bias of the veneer as a depth guide to the the last sheet of veneer and then let the wet, damp, winter of the Seattle winter take over.
No chemicals. No heat gun. No problem so far, just patience.
P.S. my photos are great but I'm having issues getting the resolution low enough to post.
Stay tuned.
