Painting the brightwork: a heresy?

[Steve Laume]

I had been following these two, now three for a while. They lend great possibilities to the idea of painting your bright work. http://www.svsereia.com/ Teak seems so boring, Steve.

[Tommy Wade]

I would highly recommend against painting your brightwork for one reason. Resale value. When you get ready to sell that boat if the paint doesn't look like a million dollars it's going to kill your chances of selling the boat. Most people buy Cape Dory's because they want that classic look. When most of us envision the classic yacht I don't think painted brightwork is what we have in mind.

My opinion... and you know what they say about opinions!

Tommy

[Judith]

I had been following these two, now three for a while. They lend great possibilities to the idea of painting your bright work. http://www.svsereia.com/ Teak seems so boring, Steve.

I love this website! I know I was supposed to look at the "painting brightwork" angle, but the rest of it is just super! Check out the "Tall Tales" section of stories. . .The VERY best part? The recipes totally rock--eeeehawwww! I love searching out tasty/interesting/healthy (preferably "all of the aforementioned") dishes to cook in my favorite galley. These are great! Thanks, Steve!

Cheers,
Judith

[Russell]

I have often considered painting the brightwork. Not all of it, the easy to varnish stuff like the handrails and eyebrow I would leave varnished. But in the tropics (I am in the Caribbean) the varnish gets eaten like candy and its a lot of work for this single hander to keep up with it. So I have considered painting the toerail and rubrail, since that is the biggest pain in the ass to varnish. I would never put paint down right on it, any paint pigment would get into the wood grain and pretty much permanently ruin any chance of going back. I would either epoxy or varnish first to seal the wood (epoxy probably better since varnish and paint dont tend to play nicely and varnish takes months to fully cure anyways) then lay down the paint, making it not much trouble to strip it back for resale. If I did it I would paint it to match the hull color, I would not try to use a color like red or anything, I cannot imagine it coming out well (but I as well have followed sereias blog and I think its super cool what they did, but they went all out so it works, just doing it a little would look silly).

Its been a couple years I have been considering this, but I still have not done it and have continued with the serious chore of keeping up the brightwork in this all too harsh sun. Why? Because cape dorys are darn pretty boats and I am a purist when it comes to bright work. I am an oddball down here in the Caribbean in that I am one of the very few boats that uses real varnish, ussually the only boats with real varnish down here rather then cetol or grey weather teak are the big ones with professional crews to do that work. But it may seem odd to some, and I dont mean offense to any of the cetol users here, but painting the brightwork actually seems less offensive then cetol to me! (though I am still waiting to see cetol natural in person, it may be what sways me finally). The only acceptable options I see are stick with varnish, paint it white, or let it go grey.

But since I am a varnish purist, and since most people opt for beamy bleach bottle boats for cruising for optimal living space rather then good sailing characteristics, my boat is without a doubt, 95% of the time, the prettiest boat in any given achorage. That is something I am very proud of, and painting that toerail would seriously mare that.

As for your maintence question, yes, it would drasticly reduce your maintence. A 1 part poly paint, while not nearly as rugged as a 2 part, is still drasticly more durable then cetol, varnish or any typical brightwork finish. In low wear areas (ie spots you are not walking on) and being in MD, you should get 3 or 4 years of it staying bright and lovely looking. No brightwork finish will do that. In fact, I would suggest going with 1 part rather then 2 part for the sheer fact that one day you might want to remove it (for selling or for your change of heart) and the 1 part will come off far easier.

I would definately NOT use house paint. If cost is a concern, let it go grey, a boat with weathered teak can still be very handsome(and in a lot of ways look saltier), a boat painted with housepaint will just look trashy and require a lot of maintence.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Russell

[oldragbaggers]

Some years ago we bought a Cabo Rico 38 from the Boy Scouts for $10K. (Yes, that's not a typo!!) There was a reason for that rock bottom price, and one of the lesser reasons (the bigger reasons were serious structural issues which eventually convinced us to abandon the rebuild of the boat, but that's another story..)
was a caprail that was damaged and deteriorated beyond repair but was absolutely impossible for us to get off. What I ended up doing was repairing all damage with epoxy. First I treated the whole caprail with penetrating epoxy until it wouldn't accept any more. Then I used thickened epoxy to fill gouged out and damaged areas. After all that I sanded it slicker than snail snot and painted it with a 1-part poly in Teak Brown. I think the paint was Interlux Brightsides. Anyway, it wasn't a beautiful varnish job, but against the white topsides it didn't look bad at all. It was an acceptable fix in our eyes. We have some pretty ragged teak on our new CD28 and I actually asked Lance if he thought we should go that route again. He said maybe, someday, if we're unable to do anything else with it. But we will try and restore what we have first. As an afternote.... the epoxy on the caprail turned cloudy looking in very short order in the sun before we did the paint, so if you're going to use epoxy, get something with UV protection over it as quickly as you can. My 2 cents.
Becky

[Joe Myerson]

Back to your original question:

A neighbor of mine owns Glass Lady, a 40-foot John Alden ketch that was originally built for Charles Francis Adams (not the historian, but his son, the former Navy secretary and chairman of Raytheon).

When he bought her, the current owner said the beautiful boat had been stored on shore under a cover for so long that all her brightwork and teak decking was mildewed and stained. Instead of sanding and varnishing all that teak, he opted to paint the wood, in what he describes as "workboat style."

I'm sure the late Mr. Adams would have been shocked to see his glorious yacht done up like a workboat. Still, when I took a tour of the boat last spring, I thought it looked just fine.

Since I was not interested in doing the same to my 25D, I never asked how the wood was prepped, or what kind of paint was used. If you're interested, I could ask.

--Joe

[Angela and Tom]

Steve, What a great link! The whole time I was reading it I was thinking this stuff should be published. Then I clicked on "Tall Tales" and saw that Cruising World picked up one of Antonia's stories for the April 08 issue.

And Dave--you'll love this--the story is all about painting the bright work on Sereia. It's full of specific details on prep and what paints to use. Here's the link to that article:

http://www.cruisingworld.com/cruising-l ... 58709.html

After reading the Cruising World article, make sure you check out their quirky, very entertaining website.


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