Eyebrows? Why?

Odyssey is my second boat that has too much external wood which constantly needs to be varnished. I was warned by Bob about getting a boat that has a lot of “teak”. He tried to tell me how much work it is keeping it up. I ignored him. After all, I have a large cedar deck at the house that requires re-finishing every couple of years. The deck is pretty easy to maintain and it has a lot more square feet than the boat. How hard can a boat be?

Let me tell you, it’s hard. Backyard deck staining and boat varnishing are NOT the same. The deck is a open, flat, and everything gets stained. The boat on the other hand has stanchions, rub rails, shrouds, cleats, sheet car tracks, etc. All items that need to be either removed, or sanded and taped around.

Here are some pictures of our bow pulpit with and without the hardware.

That should give you an idea on how painstaking boat varnishing can be.

Believe it or not, it gets worse. Boats have eyebrows. They run pretty much from bow to stern, they’re rounded, small, and nearly impossible to sand mechanically. If they served a purpose I wouldn’t mind as much, but they are completely worthless. Did I mention that I hate varnishing eyebrows? I always leave them for last.

Here are some picture of our eyebrows.

If I can’t mechanically sand the eyebrows, how do I get it done? Fortunately, the Admiral is much better at tasks like this than I.

By the way, the original purpose of this post was to let you know we finished the varnishing, EXCEPT for the eyebrows. Keep sanding Sue 🙂