The Fall (’08) maintenance schedule included replacing the two hatches, rehabilitating the hatch screens and keeping up with the brightwork.                              First the brightwork:  The teak on Charisma is finished with Cetol, a semi-transparent coating similar to varnish.  It’s more durable than varnish and easier to work with, but still needs maintenance.  I’m finding out the hard way that when it goes, it goes fast.  A fair amount suddenly started to peel this Summer.  I got behind on it (preferring sailing to working) and now I’m having to strip some areas and completely refinish.  The “eyebrow” trim on the cabin, all four dorade boxes, the companionway hatch cover, boom gallows and the forward hatch covers all needed the full treatment.  This meant; tape the area off, strip (I used paint remover; oops.  More on that below), sand, scrub with teak cleaner and then four coats of new Cetol.  I used Te-Ka, a two part teak cleaner.  Amazing stuff, but scary.  Part one will stain anything including fiberglass.  Part two is used to deactivate the agent in part one and lifts the dirt.  Make sure everything is very wet when you use it and follow instructions carefully.  I was able to Cetol the cockpit in time before it got too bad as well as the rails, but the Port side is suffering somewhat more (it faces the sun) and won’t look as good.  I don’t want to refinish that until we’re in the boat yard at some future point since it’s awkward to reach while Charisma’s in the water.  The good news is that if you get to the Cetol finish in time, it only needs one coat for maintenance and not sanding involved.  Just dull it a bit with a scrubbing pad, wipe with Acetone and brush on a new outside coat.  The bad news is; don’t ever, ever, use regular paint remover anywhere near fiberglass.  It melts the gel coat off.  Fortunately, I had taped off all the areas I was working on in case of mishaps, but there are a few small areas where the stripper went through the tape.  Gel coat repair is going to be the next thing I’m going to be learning how to do (very minor, but I notice it).  The one boo-boo was trying to sneak a last series of touch up coats of Cetol when I knew the fog was going to come in.  I was hoping that it would dry enough before the fog actually made it to the boat.  But when I came down the next day, I saw that the Cetol had “bubbled” where dew had gathered and sat on the deck.  Given a week with better weather, the bubbles have gone away, but the area is “dull”, so I’m going to have to scrub it and give it a final gloss coat when it’s warm enough.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The new hatches.  Shana and I gave each other a hatch cover for Christmas presents last year because the hatches leak when it rains.  The originals are twenty years old and Lewmar no longer makes replacement parts for them, so new ones it was.  Really nice “Ocean” series hatches.  It’s so nice to be able to see through them now, but like everything else, it’s a time-consuming job.  First remove.  I thought that would be the hard part, but the old ones actually came off pretty easily.  Then clean.  A lot of old adhesive to clean up.  Then tape, strip and sand and refinish the teak coaming that the hatches mount onto.  Four coats of Cetol with 24 hours in between each coat means that this is automatically a week long job.  Putting the hatch on means adding caulk (3M, 4000) which always makes a huge mess even with adhesive cleaner and the aforementioned tape on everything.  But it sure is nice to hatches that; don’t leak, stay open where you put them and I like the new feature that lets you lock them open one inch, to help with ventilation.                                                                                         The Tedious Stuff.  As long as I was putting in the new hatches, Shana felt it was time to rehab the hatch screens which were torn, old and their frames were suffering from the hatch leaks (I was trying to ignore them knowing they would be a pain to fix).  This meant taking them home, prying off the quarter round trim (which broke) and then stripping, sanding, etc the two frames that hold the screen (each is 2’x1′).  Then off to the boat store for new screen, brass tacks and new teak quarter round.  I was going to use brass screen, but ended up getting a fiberglass screen.  It looks just like the old screen and is easy to work with.  I just finished putting them back together and they look pretty good (picture below).   As long as I was working on the screens, I figured this would be a good time to refinish the dorades.  They were peeling pretty badly and I figured that it would be easiest and best to just bring them home and completely redo them.  So, stripping, sanding…you know the drill, but I have to say they are going to look good. So, that’s certainly one thing about boats: they make you learn lots of new skills as well as how to work with toxic chemicals!