Since first setting eyes on MAYAN, probably over 35 years ago, I have been struck by how starkly "white" and "gray" she looked. I loved her lines, but David's desire to minimize maintenance and to reduce it to something that his hired hands could do lead to ever growing fields of white paint and bare teak. As a footnote, we've found that over the 46 years David had folks looking after MAYAN, she had more than 30 "skippers". Sadly, all that change shows at times. While a paint-n-bare-teak finish makes a great deal of sense in Florida, where MAYAN spent the first fifteen years of her life with David, it is unnecessary here in California. Especially while she is under the care of someone who actually enjoys the process of keeping her looking good.
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| MAYAN In Santa Barbara, Circa 2010 |
After a few months of working on MAYAN's other issues, we stepped back and taken a look at the various options. The most common bit of trim that folks add is a varnished cap rail. While MAYAN does have a teak cap rail, advice from Wayne is that it is too weather-worn to serve as a varnished piece at the level of quality that we like to achieve. "I can replace it with two weeks work, but we don't want to start that now." was Wayne's advice, something with which we agreed.
The second bit of traditional trim to be varnished are the hand rails and the edges of the trunk cabin, I personally dislike both of these options as varnished hand rails are much more difficult to keep a grip on when wet and I've watched competent sailors slip and fall on their ass as they step on a varnished wet cabin edge. Indeed, we have traditionally gone the other direction, stripping both of these surfaces to provide better traction for hands a feet. The spars could be varnished, and they are lovely solid sitka spruce, but I'm feeling a little old to sign up for hanging in a bosun's chair for a week a year to maintain the gloss. Based on one final factor, that it's a LOT easier to maintain large flat surfaces than small complex ones, we settled on the cabin sides as the best target-of-opportunity for our scrapers, sandpaper and varnish brushes.
We did some test stripping, to see exactly what sort of wood we were dealing with and what condition it was in. We hoped that the wood had retained some of its varnish, as we have pictures from the '40s of MAYAN with varnished cabin sides. The test strips showed white paint deep within the grain of the wood, but it also showed that her cabin sides were solid Honduras Mahogany about 3" thick. We decided that we could sand off a couple of millimeters and it wouldn't be missed. So, it was game on.
Whenever you strip the paint off of a 67 year old piece of painted wood you're going to find some surprises, this job was no exception. It appears that the after end of both sides of the trunk cabin had been damaged at some point, also the after edge of the cabin, which runs athwart ship just forward of the bridge deck and is the most conspicuous piece of wood in the boat to those riding in the cockpit. Wayne's guess is that the cabin top leaked and the freshwater got down in around the corner post in the after two corners of the house, and down the sides of the companionway and engine room hatches. Around each of these areas there were well done repairs, but they are repairs that assume that the boat's cabin sides would be painted, not varnished, so putty was liberally used and the joints weren't tight.
"No problem." says Wayne, "We'll just cut that out and match it." I looked at the 2' high by 3' long chunk of the cabin side on each side and swallowed hard. "OK, now or never." and off we went.
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| Routing Out The Old Seam |
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| All Cleaned Up, Waiting For A Spline |
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| First Router Cut |
A similar technique was used by Wayne's carpenter, Ruben, to start to remove the top layers of wood at the after end of each side of the cabin. Because we were going to cover up these joints and the bolts that were added to hold the cabin side to the corner posts, we've documented all this with photos and a description for future caretakers of MAYAN. The initial cuts along the edges of the area to be removed are guided by the cabin top, the deck, and two plywood guides that are clamped to the side of the house. This leaves clean edges. The next step, which Ruben has started here, is to router out all the excess wood within the target area.
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| Starting To Router Out The Area |
In this close-up view you can see the first cut, approximately 1/2" deep, made by the router. Ruben then re-set his router depth to finish everything to a depth of 3/4". He choose not to do this in one cut because the load on the router is pretty high, but also because when the router is loaded up the tip of the blade tends to jump a bit and leaves patters on the finished surface. This way, the floor of the inlay will be much smoother and easier to glue to.
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| Aft Edge, Showing Lag Bolts |
Finally, the entire bottom of the area to be covered is smoothed with hand planes of various types to insure it is flat and true. The next step will be to fit a piece of wood to this hole, as a large piece of inlayed wood, or what Ruben is now calling "The Big Dutchman".
Over on the port side, we've taken the opportunity to remove the shore power plug, which was mounted directly to the cabin side, and cover the hole with the 3/4" inlay. I relocated the shore power plug into the engine room and cut a small groove in the top of one of the engine room hatch boards to let the cord get below. I've never liked having a shore power cord where the salt spray can get to it. Yes, we can put a cover over it, but the darn thing was the only piece of chrome aboard MAYAN and it looked UGLY mounted on the cabin side. In the engine room it'll be safe, dry and out of sight. Re-running the size 6 wires for the 50 Amp connector was a PITA, but now that it's done I'm a much happier guy.
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| Square Inlay Cut Awaiting New Wood |
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