So one of the attractions of the trailer sailer I just bought which marked it as a well looked after boat was that all the teak strips in the cockpit on the floor and seats were beautifully varnished and the teak in good condition. The strips are about 5 mm thick and I don't think they are structural although to some extent everything is structural in a very lightly built trailer sailer.

This teak is however hopelessly impractical as it is slippery as hell.
I can of course put exercise mats down over it but I was thinking of sanding the top surface and then applying some sort of teak oil. The problem then becomes that I haven't sanded the sides which will still be vanished and prevent drainage/airing. Also what product?


I came across a guy who ripped it all off and glued some fairly dense stiff rubber stuff down which is used on jet skis which looked quite good but I haven't got the time to do that before departing next week for Queensland.

Thoughts please?

Semco natural is what I use, plenty of different opinions around it. My experience to date is good, no regrets, it does require touching up 2 to 3 times a year in full sun to keep it looking new, sounds onerous but its really very easy. No prep required like sanding or taping off deck fittings or painted areas etc to re-coat, I just keep a tin on board with a disposable foam brush and do a section at a time when I feel like it. If you spilt a bit on you gelcoat you just wipe it off with a damp cloth before it dries.

My boat has a lots of teak, I could re coat it all in a morning. It would take you less than 1/2hour to re-coat with Semco once you get the first coat on.

btw I never sanded my teak so it still has all the ridges and valleys that give it such good grip. Its also not as hot in the full summer sun with the Semco on it as it was when it was just left to silver off.

You could use that timber look rubber matting and use a light glue, pressing tge material in the spaces between the timber slats and over the timber.

Or use a stain and sprinkle grit over when wet..
Although I wouldn't think it would last long??

Or use Kiwi grip and grit??

It's shame to cover that timber..At least an added grit, it will retain the timber...
You made need to experiment..

I see it's a bit wet in Sydney..

Constant light rain in Adelaide this morning,..10 to 25mm expected!!!

Cheers...

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I definitely don't want to start painting because that's a never-ending job and the gelcoat all-around is in great condition.

Ill read up on Semco. What are the supposed disadvantages?

Yes it's just started to rain in Sydney today and I turned the boat around in the front yard in case it gets all boggy before departure next week.

Attacking the batteries now because I think they are a bit suspect. Ordered a 120ah lithium online on an eofy special and keeping my fingers crossed that it gets here in time. Might have to rewire the isolation switch to make sure it stays totally separate from the lead acid starter battery for both usage and charging.
After building a structure to retain my new Rovin fridge I plug it in to find it is dead on arrival and there is no more stock at any store near me. Supposedly head office of RTM will supply one before next Wednesday!

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julesmoto said..


Ill read up on Semco. What are the supposed disadvantages?

Teak is a bit of an emotive subject, lots of people wouldn't have it and those that do can have strong opinions on coating it or leaving it to silver off naturally. Those that think it should be left to silver are opposed to all coatings so much of the negative opinion around Semco stems from that viewpoint I think. I'm not opposed to leaving it natural but I do like the look better with it coated, I think it repels dirt a little better as well.

I guess the biggest disadvantage is having to re coat it, that takes time and costs money.

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cammd said..

julesmoto said..


Ill read up on Semco. What are the supposed disadvantages?

Teak is a bit of an emotive subject, lots of people wouldn't have it and those that do can have strong opinions on coating it or leaving it to silver off naturally. Those that think it should be left to silver are opposed to all coatings so much of the negative opinion around Semco stems from that viewpoint I think. I'm not opposed to leaving it natural but I do like the look better with it coated, I think it repels dirt a little better as well.

I guess the biggest disadvantage is having to re coat it, that takes time and costs money.

Yes up to now I have avoided teak on boats like the plague. On my NS 38 the only external teak are the handrails on the coachouse roof which I meticulously varnished and now keep under longitudinally slit pool noodles in between sails.

I don't mind it silvering off but I don't want it getting grooves in the grain which catch water and eventually cause it to split and rot and feel bad under foot/bum. It is after all in my case only strips probably 4 mm thick. Don't mind reapplying oil relatively frequently as long as I don't have to tape off surrounding areas. I think I have read that it should never be scrubbed along the grain or high pressure water blasted which obviously removes any natural or applied oils. My worry with sanding off the varnish do facilitate oiling is that I won't be able to get it off the edges which might just serve to keep the water in.

On my yacht I have Starbrite teak sealer on the teak in the cockpit. It's just 3M's version of Semco. On the cockpit of my Finn dinghy I have used outdoor furniture oil, 3 or 4 coats. Water beads off it and it's not slippery. When the yacht needs doing next I shall just use the same stuff. If you decide to re-varnish later it will go on over the oil.

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Ramona said..
On my yacht I have Starbrite teak sealer on the teak in the cockpit. It's just 3M's version of Semco. On the cockpit of my Finn dinghy I have used outdoor furniture oil, 3 or 4 coats. Water beads off it and it's not slippery. When the yacht needs doing next I shall just use the same stuff. If you decide to re-varnish later it will go on over the oil.

Thanks for that is very helpful.

When I hear the words sealer I think it might be a little like paint which which when it breaks down leaves some sort of residue which must be manually removed.

When I think of oil I think of something that presumably degrades in sunlight to a product that is very slightly soluble in water and hence gets washed out over a long period but requires no prep before recoating.

What outside furniture oil do you use and where do you get it?

Boiled Linseed concoction for a Matt finish & Tung oil for a top coat for a varnish type shine. I use the deks. But too slippery for you purpose. I haven't as yet seen this years hire yacht but I'm counting the days

This is teak cleaned and sealed without brightening agent. Good for winter but too hot in summer. Used Teak Wonder products but I find (as with most) it needs cleaning and resealing every few months (just reposting with oil gets too dark) so I let it go to grey, then start from scratch again when I feel like it but now with brighter included.

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julesmoto said..

Ramona said..
On my yacht I have Starbrite teak sealer on the teak in the cockpit. It's just 3M's version of Semco. On the cockpit of my Finn dinghy I have used outdoor furniture oil, 3 or 4 coats. Water beads off it and it's not slippery. When the yacht needs doing next I shall just use the same stuff. If you decide to re-varnish later it will go on over the oil.

Thanks for that is very helpful.

When I hear the words sealer I think it might be a little like paint which which when it breaks down leaves some sort of residue which must be manually removed.

When I think of oil I think of something that presumably degrades in sunlight to a product that is very slightly soluble in water and hence gets washed out over a long period but requires no prep before recoating.

What outside furniture oil do you use and where do you get it?

The Starbrite sealer goes on just like oil and looks like oil when its dry. That's why I will redo in oil next time, same effect half the price. I'm using Intergrain oil from Bunnings but Wattle is just as good. The Intergrain has a very pungent odour that lasts a few days.

If you are in a rush just sand it for now. Try 320 grit, if not 220. It won't be as slippery. You could just sand the flat top part and leave the sides.
There are plenty of non skid clear sprays and adhesives. Can't help with brands as I am not in OZ. You should be able to find rolls of 1" clear non skid.
Then do something more permanent when you have time. You may even just leave it?

www.amazon.com/Transparent-Clear-Comfortable-Safety-Track/dp/B07T3P3QY8

Thanks for all the help guys. Meanwhile my Volt-X lithium battery arrived a day after I ordered it from, of all places, Woolworths online. Quite surprised at the weight which is still just over 14 kilos for 120 amp hours.

I have an Iroko deck, often called African Teak. To prevent groves forming when I scrub the deck I never scrub along the grain but across.
This is my recipe boat soup for oiling the deck:
1/3 per volume of each: Tung Oil, Boiled Linseed Oil, Gum Terpentine. You can add a bit of stockholm tar ( mixed in the gum turps)
and for the last coat or two some Terebine which is a drying agent. I do my deck at the beginning of summer, again end of summer or autumn. Sometimes another coat in around late winter or when It looks like it needs a coat. Get the stockholm tar from a produce shop. They sell it for horses hoves.

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Finally started to address this issue yesterday after all the valued advice last year.

I sanded the varnish off one teak strip and bought the Teak Wonder product available at Whitworths which they say has been around for quite a while and that they have sold quite a lot of. Not cheap of course but cheaper than some alternatives.





Applied some yesterday (after sanding with 240 then 400- took longer than expected previous owner most have spent hours on many coats). Two applications about an hour apart and the teak readily drank it up. No instructions on the can about dry time or what to use for wash-up so not much clue as to what it really is.

I put the brush on top of the can overnight and went to give it another coat this morning and the brush hadn't turned stiff in the slightest. The stuff seems extremely thin with the consistency of water. I haven't tried mixing a bit with water yet and hopefully it won't just wash out. I have some furniture teak oil in the house which if anything seems to be of thicker consistency.

I was hoping that this stuff might go on thin and then perhaps thicken up a bit as it dries but that doesn't seem to be the case. It is of course winter and it has been less than a day but I'm not particularly impressed. The instructions talk about reapplications in six to eight weeks so keeping this stuff up is pretty much a full-time job.

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julesmoto said..
Thanks for all the help guys. Meanwhile my Volt-X lithium battery arrived a day after I ordered it from, of all places, Woolworths online. Quite surprised at the weight which is still just over 14 kilos for 120 amp hours.

Tried buying a fire extinguisher for it yet!.
It is a serious question.

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lydia said..

julesmoto said..
Thanks for all the help guys. Meanwhile my Volt-X lithium battery arrived a day after I ordered it from, of all places, Woolworths online. Quite surprised at the weight which is still just over 14 kilos for 120 amp hours.

Tried buying a fire extinguisher for it yet!.
It is a serious question.

My understanding is any fire extinguisher would be a waste of time unless perhaps you were sitting there watching it and caught it at the very early stages of overheating or were alerted by your temperature gauge.

However I think it is lithium ion batteries that are mostly the problem (the type found in scooters and early electric cars) and that lithium iron phosphate are extremely stable. In light however of the dire (however unlikely) consequences we have given up sleeping in the back double bunk the entrance to which is directly above the battery cover in favour of the front V-berth which is definitely not as comfortable.

Even though there is a minuscule risk the thing, including its BMS, is after all made in China. I have a temperature alarm with a probe taped to the battery and smoke alarm directly above it as well.

On the plus side the battery is nearly a year old now and I'm still alive.

Actually solar on a boat is an interesting exercise and I'm so pissed at electricity prices and yet further ripoff's associated with feed in tariffs that I'm thinking of getting a few 250 amp hour lithium iron phosphates and hooking them up in series for my house independent of the grid so that I don't have to sell them my power for nothing.
I guess however we're getting into very serious thread drift now twice removed from the original title and not even related to this whole forum.

To get back to this thread it seems my post yesterday is illegible so repeated hereunder.

So finally yesterday I sanded the varnish off one teak strip (took me ages because the previous owner had done a wonderful job and there seemed to be umpteen coats on it) and bought the Teak Wonder product available at Whitworths which they say has been around for quite a while and that they have sold quite a lot of. Not cheap of course but cheaper than some alternatives.

Applied some yesterday in two applications about an hour apart and the teak readily drank it up. No instructions on the can about dry time or what to use for wash-up so not much clue as to what it really is. I put the brush on top of the can and went to give it another coat this morning and the brush hasn't turned stiff in the slightest. The stuff seems extremely thin with the consistency of water. I haven't tried mixing a bit with water yet and hopefully it won't just wash out. I have some furniture teak oil in the house which if anything seems to be of thicker consistency. I was hoping that this stuff might go on thin and then perhaps thicken up a bit as it dries but that doesn't seem to be the case. It is of course winter and it has been less than a day but I'm not particularly impressed. The instructions talk about reapplications in six to eight weeks so keeping this stuff up is pretty much a full-time job.

There are cleaners that are recommended before this type of product but I assume that they were either just acetone or perhaps bleach to get rid of any black coloring so I didn't use these although did wipe down with acetone after sanding.

Presumably the problem with any product that goes a bit hard after application is that you can't just recoat without sanding or other prep whereas with oil you can just keep putting it on.

Regarding all the prior advice that appeared on here last year for which I thank you guys I baulked at Guitz's concoction due to sourcing the multiplicity of ingredients and must now agree with Ramona's assessment of the type of product I used and his recommendation just to go with a Bunnings product if I go the whole hog with this solution.

Bit of an update on this subject.
Due to the arrangement of the teak on my boat with alternating lines of teak and exposed gel coat and the fact that to coat the edges of the teak and underneath where it meets the gel coat I have to get product on the gel coat. Teak Wonder contains little particles of stain which then gets on the white gel coat and obviously doesn't look too good. It looks great on the teak though.I also accidentally knocked the can over so decided to look around for other products.


I was looking in Bunnings for something which was clear and in the process rang the technical department of a mob that sold a clear outside oil and also various tints for it. They advised me that the teak would grey off if I did not use the tint as the tint was part of the UV filtering.

I then took another look at Starbright which seems to be clear although it's hard to tell because it comes in a very narrow neck bottle. The blurb says that it has UV filters. Anyway I found a way to get a significant discount on Starbright so I'm now trying that. Seems to look very similar to adjoining strips which have been done with Teak Wonder but only time will tell.

I'm still a long way off having all my Teak done as the PO bless his heart must have put a dozen coats of varnish on which are difficult to get off particularly whilst avoiding sanding adjacent gel coat areas bordering every single strip.

Another picture of the majority of my teak (before any oiling) is attached just to demonstrate my problem.

The preparation of the teak prior to the application of the oil or sealer is "Metal Gleam". This is the same phosphoric acid mix used to clean fibreglass hulls and SS fittings, flushing engine cooling systems etc. Use 5:1 for everything. You can also use patio deck cleaner that has oxallic acid in it. It just returns the teak to its natural colour. I used the Starbright sealer on my cockpit. It has lots of tint, and after 12 months it's looking a bit shabby again. I have a small section I have put some Intergrain clear on as a test to see how that goes. I don't like the colour much and it's not a good sealer either. The Starbright sealer, a 3M product did not seal either! The hatchway cover and frames I used Intergrain outdoor oil in a Kauri tint and while that is a bit dark has held up exceptionally well for 3 years. The frame is teak but the covers ply, probably coachwood.
The Starbright stuff was expensive. Walking around Bunnings the other day I was shocked at how much the premier grades of outdoor oil now costs! It's as expensive as the Starbright now in the 1 litre tins.

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Ramona said..
The preparation of the teak prior to the application of the oil or sealer is "Metal Gleam". This is the same phosphoric acid mix used to clean fibreglass hulls and SS fittings, flushing engine cooling systems etc. Use 5:1 for everything. You can also use patio deck cleaner that has oxallic acid in it. It just returns the teak to its natural colour. I used the Starbright sealer on my cockpit. It has lots of tint, and after 12 months it's looking a bit shabby again. I have a small section I have put some Intergrain clear on as a test to see how that goes. I don't like the colour much and it's not a good sealer either. The Starbright sealer, a 3M product did not seal either! The hatchway cover and frames I used Intergrain outdoor oil in a Kauri tint and while that is a bit dark has held up exceptionally well for 3 years. The frame is teak but the covers ply, probably coachwood.
The Starbright stuff was expensive. Walking around Bunnings the other day I was shocked at how much the premier grades of outdoor oil now costs! It's as expensive as the Starbright now in the 1 litre tins.

Thank you

So this is the Starbright product which I am trying which just says "Teak Oil penetrating sealer- preserver" and also says "formulated with UV inhibitors". It definitely has no tinting and has not stained the white gel coat beside the teak.

I'm pretty sure the Intergrain product was the one I was looking at in Bunnings the other day (whose technical/cust. service dept Bunnings rang for me and put me onto) who advised that the clear product had no UV filter and would not stop graying of teak. The guy said however that if mixed with their tint there was a UV filter and graying would be inhibited. He definitely sounded like he knew what he was talking about.




Made in USA too.

This is the stuff I used. Not a good sealer and about the same as outdoor oil.

www.starbrite.com/item/tropical-teak-oilsealer-light

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Ramona said..
This is the stuff I used. Not a good sealer and about the same as outdoor oil.

www.starbrite.com/item/tropical-teak-oilsealer-light

Yes they are definately different products as yours speaks of solids and definitely looks to have a lot of tinting in it at the very least whereas mine is clear with no solids that need to be stirred up although it still says to shake the bottle.
It sounds to me like your product is probably my product with a tint in it.

Why do you say that it is not a good sealer? How can you tell? Water soakes in?