With our old sailboat, Selene, a 35’ Moody I don’t think it ever crossed our mind that our teak deck needed a clean. Of course, we’d spray it down with fresh water and clean off any bird poop but we never thought of properly cleaning the teak.
With our Oyster 56′, we’ve felt a stronger desire to make the teak look amazing
Perhaps it’s because there’s more of it AND maybe it’s because the weather is nice enough to spend time cleaning?
Our Moody was in the English Solent and staying warm, even during the summer, was our main concern. Now that we’re sailing the warmer waters of the Mediterranean and have nothing better to do, we set out to learn the best way to clean and maintain our teak decks.
That being said, we didn’t learn the proper way of doing our teak until after we had one dud attempt. Back in April, when we were in Malta my husband, cousin and I spent the day cleaning the teak with fresh water and brushes. The gunk that came of the boat was disgusting! As we used our brushes, black sludge oozed out the wood and it smelled quite fishy. Yuck!
Furthermore, we noticed that the grey wood turned to wood colored wood
Unfortunately, however, the wood colored teak didn’t last very long. Within a few days it was back to the dull grey color. What a waste of time. We spent some very precious hours cleaning while my daughter was with friends and the end result didn’t last long.
While in Sicily, my husband asked our new contact, George Rizzo, what his thoughts were about cleaning teak. If you don’t know George, he’s a man that knows everything there is to know about boating and boats. Moreover, he knows who you need to know to get anything done.
George not only explained a proper way to clean the teak, he actually helped my husband to get the necessary solutions. I’m not a chandlery dawdler so I have no idea about marine brands. I assume there are a variety of brands, but we used a line of solutions from Teak Wonder.
The 3-step process of cleaning Teak is fairly easy but quite time consuming
Before starting, you’ll need teak cleaner, teak brightener and then a teak stain-sealant in addition to fresh water. This job cannot be done with salt-water so it somewhat restricts you to doing the job in a marina where a fresh water hose can be sourced.
How to make the teak deck on your sailboat look amazing
Step 1: Clean the teak
We used Teak Wonder Teak Cleaner. It’s a blue solution that we dabbed on our wet deck with a brush you’d use to clean dishes with. We poured the solution into a cut-open 1.5 ltr water bottle. And then we used a larger longer brush to do the scrubbing. Going with the grain of the wood we’d scrub the gunk out, wash away with fresh water and the repeat if necessary. The trick is to get the soap suds to remain white rather than turn dirty colored. Once they’re white, it’s a sign to move onto the next patch. We focused on small square patches. Below is a picture of my cousin scrubbing the deck clean.
Step 2: Brighten the teak
While the deck is wet, you can slop this stuff on with a 3” paint brush. There’s no need to be precise, you just want to soak the teak with it. To my amazement, the teak bighted up in a big way. It’s always so nice to see results so quickly. See pictures below.
Step 3: Dressing and Sealer
Once the deck has completely dried, you can then apply a light stain and sealant to really preserve the wood color. This takes quite a while as you can’t slop this stuff on. In fact, it’s really hard to keep it from spraying onto the GRP or the non-teak areas. And it likes to run so you have to keep an eye on it that it’s not draining off the teak and onto the white areas of the deck and hull. The results, however, seem to be worth it. It’s still early days, only a week since we finished, but thus far the deck looks fantastic. It’s still wood colored and not that dull gray!
Now…our next problem is to find out how to clean the GRP and get rid of all the stain that dribbled onto it!
Overall, it took us several stops at marinas to get the deck done. We needed to use fresh water and the only time we had that opportunity was when there was a fresh water supply. We did parts of our deck in Riposto, Sicily and then in Greece – Gouvia Marina, Lefkas Marina and one final push at Sami.
If you have any other tips, techniques or comments about cleaning and staining a teak deck, please let me know. Also – any tips on cleaning GPR would be appreciated too.
Cleaning the GRP is very easy:
Here are 3 methods I use in order of preference.
Method 1: Keep a damp/wet rag with you while applying the sealant and wipe off immediately before it dries.. It will come off very easily. If it has dried you can put a wet rag over the stain for some time and you should be able to rub it off. Otherwise see methods 2 and 3,
Method 2: A mild rubbing compound such as Farecla G3 or similar put a little bit on a rag and rub off. This requires a little bit more elbow grease than method 2 but is safer. Many polish systems have some sort of pre-wax polish that is a very very fine mildly abrasive polish used to bring out the shine, this will work well as the teak wonder is much softer than the grp gelcoat so it won’t stand up to a scrub. Since you are cleaning by hand there is no risk of gelcoat damage.
Method 3: A rag lightly dampened with acetone will do the trick… It comes off immediately do not put too much acetone as it would matt the GRP slightly. You only need a little acetone to remove the teak wonder. Milder solvents like kerosene or even diesel will also work well, but be careful not to splash onto the teak as it will stain. The key here is to use the smallest amount of solvents possible. Also do not leave rags that have been dampened with acetone / kerosene / diesel lying about in closed places like lazarettes etc. Rinse them out with water and a bit of soap and water or discard them.
Thank you so much for your feedback Patrick – It’s greatly appreciated 🙂
I would like to borrow this George guy, I need so much info. I would also like to borrow your cousin, she is beautiful. I wont want to giver her back though, except for visits.
Thanks for the useful information
The following was emailed to me recently so I thought I’d post it here to share the information…
“Dear Kim
I came across your blog by chance. Just be careful with teak wonder – yes it does a great job initially but it contains silicone which may cause problems with stains and removal of silicone from the gelcoat etc. I have a yacht in Melbourne Australia – and the product caused me grief. Rinse well and remove stains before they are impregnated in the gelcoat.
Max”
Cleaner wax works perfectly for removing the errant sealer from your gelcoat.
I recommend that you apply undiluted liquid dish-soap with a rag or brush to all GRP areas near the teak (do not get the soap onto the teak or your teak products will not adhere) you are going to work on and allow the dish liguid to dry completely before you apply stain or sealer etc to the teak.
Apply your stains,, sealants, varnish or whatever to the woodwork without worry about going over onto the GRP, and if you do go over onto the GRP don’t worry about it, just continue on with the teak application and do not wipe the spills off the GRP, but let it all dry onto the Dish-Soap barrier coat.
After the teak work is all dry you can merely spray away the dish soap off the GRP and just like magic, whatever drips you wasted on it disappears along with the soap.
The undiluted dish liguid also makes it quite easy to keep engine grease from staining into your hands whenever you have to do engine maintenance or repair. Before you go elbows deep into the engine bay just apply two good coats of dish liguid to your hands allowing each coat to dry before you apply the next. The grease and oil stays on the surface of the soap and does not penetrate into the skin so when you wash your hands afterwards it all (mostly) goes away without need to go around with black stained hands like a dirt-bag for a week.
A better and foolproof 100% effective tip to keep the grease from staining into your hands is to hire someone else to change your oil while you leisurely sip an iced beverage at the dockside Cafe and gloat over how much better your life is than the poor grease-monkey you are paying a few bucks to bust his knuckles in your engine bay.
Thanks for this Jim – very helpful!
Hi Kim,
I enjoy your site.
We have just finished cleaning and brightening our teak deck with Teak Wonder. We are debating on using the teak wonder dressing. What are your thoughts on how it holds up? And best way to protect the gelcoat when applying? Will the dressing protect the teak from grease stains from food, like chips etc?
Our other option is to let it go silver with no dressing.
Thanks for any advise!
Jon
Hey Jon! Thank you for the feedback on the website. After going through the whole ‘teak wonder’ system we’ve ultimately decided not to do it again. It took too long and the results didn’t last. It seems like many people use Boracol for the deck – it controls moulds and algae. After reading the Oyster forum for the past year, the consensus on there is that Boracol is the best… If you google it you’ll find more information on the product. Best wishes with your deck! Smiles, Kim
Hi Kim. Teak wonder is great, but even after this treatment the wood will eventually start to lose its colour. You might want to consider using Boracol, it’s a wood preservative, it prevents the dreaded algae from getting a grip on the teak. You’ll usually see other boats in marinas that have been left for a while, especially over the winter period, there’s usually signs of green & black algae forming. If you use the Boracol, it prevents all this happening, you can also use it on the spray hood & sail covers.
The wood will start to go a lovely silver colour, which is quite normal.
Be careful scrubbing’with’ the grain, you’re just creating grooves for the dirt to get into & shortening the decks life. Happy sailing.
Thank you Terry! Yes we use Boracol…and we now prefer it over Teak Wonder. It’s brilliant. Teak wonder looks great at the beginning but it doesn’t last long. I appreciate your comments and hope that other readers read this! 🙂