It’s so nice to get the exterior teak cleaned! This photo shows the swim step on our stern when it was half done. What a difference!
What to do while we wait for the new window glass? Clean up the boat! Jim used plastic sheeting to cover up the broken window so that we could safely spray water on the outside of the boat. He gave Phoenix a much-needed washing, and I had a chance to tackle the exterior teak.
Over the winter, our exterior teak decks accumulate dirt. Even though we have the boat washed once a month, the grain in the teak still absorbs dirt. So, cleaning and brightening the teak is an annual spring or summer chore.
This is a before photo of the teak decking on our boat deck and the steps to the fly bridge. It really accumulates dirt over the winter.
I use Star Brite Teak Care to clean our exterior teak, and have been very happy with the results. The first step is cleaning the teak. I use a paintbrush to apply Teak Cleaner to dry teak. After it sits for a few minutes, I scrub off the dirt with a scrub brush. It takes quite a bit of scrubbing, and if the teak is very dirty, I need to repeat this step before the teak looks clean.
After the teak dries, the second step is to apply Star Brite’s Teak Brightener. This process is a bit easier, as it doesn’t require any scrubbing. I spread on the brightener with a paintbrush, let it sit about 5-10 minutes, and then rinse it off. If it’s sunny, areas of the teak may dry while waiting to rinse. If this happens, I use the hose to lightly sprinkle water on any dry spots.
This is the after photo, after cleaning with Teak Cleaner and brightening with Teak Brightener. To the right of the fly bridge stairs, you can see the plastic sheeting covering the broken window for protection from spraying water.
Star Brite and other teak system manufacturers also recommend applying teak oil as a third step in the teak cleaning process to bring out the shine. We’ve found that the oil makes the teak look great for a while, but the oil tends to attract dirt over time, and the teak gets dirty faster. So I stop after applying the brightener.
New Storeroom
An unplanned activity also kept us busy this week. The door broke on our storeroom unit at Anacortes Marina. It’s a metal garage door with panels that are supposed to roll up. When Jim tried to close it on Tuesday, it jammed and stopped rolling. We couldn’t close it all the way in order to put our lock on the door, so our things could not be secured.
When the storeroom door broke, it stuck at a position just slightly above the ground level. No way to latch it with our lock!
After much discussion with the marina management, we ended up having to move all our stuff to another similar unit. And after 12 years in that 10×10 storeroom, you can imagine how much stuff had to be sorted through and moved!
It was quite a job to get all the stuff out of the storeroom and move it into the new unit. So glad we had dock carts to help us!
Of course, it will be better in the long run because we had a chance to toss things and rearrange stuff. But moving our storeroom contents really wasn’t on our schedule this week. It consumed all of one day and part of the next!
Jim was tired but happy after getting our stuff moved and organized in the new storeroom unit.
Cruising With Phoenix 
How much stuff did you loose from one store room to the new one? 🙂 I tend to keep more than I should.
Us too! We definitely ended up with a pretty good pile of stuff that went into the dumpster as well as a cart full of recyclables. Also put some things we weren’t using anymore out in front of the dumpster where people tend to look for “treasures” (i.e., heavy-duty power buffer that’s too heavy for us now, a gallon of boat cleaner we aren’t using any more, a winch handle holder, etc.) and all of it was gone by the next morning. For sure, one person’s trash IS another person’s treasure!