When we arrived back to Swiftwing in January we had a list of jobs that needed to be done before we could head for Florida.  The weather was so cold in January that when I washing down the walls with hot water it  instantly  turned to ice and it seemed like a hopeless task to get anything done. However, Duggie disappeared into the aft cabin, I thought to hibernate, but next moment was ordering enough teak  to fit out an ocean liner.  He managed to track down a company in Pennsylvania that supplied sustainable teak and had supplied the mountain of teak for the recent rebuild of the Cutty Sark.

 

Renovation and fitting out of the aft cabin on board Swiftwing.

 

The before photo. Stripped of all the cheap nasty plywood, this is what Duggie started with.

 

So for years we have been looking at insulation on the walls and ceiling and an ugly painted bulkhead. Despite having to remove our bedding  every day to allow work to go ahead, it has been worth all the disruption,  to have what is now a very luxurious  aft cabin.

 

 

Teak louvre doors for the cupboard at the end of the bed.

 

 

 

This is the ‘after’ photo of  photo No.1 above. Tongue and grove teak on the aft bulk head and finished cupboard. Polished stainless steel piano hinges attached to the  doors, which through clever design, concertina out to give as much access  room as possible. Frame for the doors made with some of the teak decking we rescued and the deck-head lined with sheets melamine that have been travelling with us, unfitted,  for seven years.

Bed looks inviting but too much work to do.

 

New doors to fit  below  the chart table. The blue tape is to avoid scratching the wood when Duggie saws off the protruding dowels with a Japanese dowel saw.  The  dowels are to hide the screws;  piano hinges used to fix the doors onto cupboard. Made from rescued doors from the motor boat which were sawn in half  and dressed up with teak  off-cuts from the new tongue and groove. The doors are very solid as a bruise, shows when I dropped the door on my foot.

 

Dowel end ready to be cut flush and sanded to match the surrounding woodwork.

 

 

Sanding the three-quarter inch thick teak that came off the deck of a power boat that is to be broken up, as it has a hull which leaks like a sieve and is no longer viable. Duggie cut it up into the large  sections you can see behind me in the photo, six feet by two feet.  The teak deck had been laid onto tar paper (roofing felt without the rough top finish)  and  had been screwed down onto plywood backing. Each plank had to be separated from the ply and the ends of the brass screws were cut off with an angle grinder.  The rubber caulking was then removed with a Stanley knife, routed and then it all had to be sanded. The quality of the recycled teak is second to none and the varnished finishes are beautiful.

 

Not much left of the motor boat deck! Duggie left a few deck beams in place so that the motor yacht’s hull wouldn’t implode with him on it!

 

 

We have named this piece of wood work the picket fence, but it is the teak decking from the motor boat cut into nine inch lengths and and goes to make up the uprights in the new cockpit. There are eight, six foot lengths, of picket fence now surrounding and inside the cockpit. The planks are individually screwed and dowelled as well as glued with west epoxy. One of todays jobs is to sand the dowels and then apply more teak oil.

 

 

Varnishing on the deck. This is the toe rail which won’t go back on before next year. The sun plays havoc with varnish. I have canvas at home to make up sun covers as it is a huge amount of work to sand and varnish the woodwork every couple of years. About ten layers of varnish on this lot.

 

                                                                                                                                        

 

 

Corridor to forepeak painted and brown stain removed from teak wood surrounds and varnished . Corridor to the aft cabin also repainted with the six doors.  Duggie and Cliff replacing the rubbing strake with new iroko wood.

 

The  deck lockers and surrounding ply were rotten in places and the through deck fixings were galvanised bolts that had  rusted badly and were leaving rust stains on the deck.  The fixings were  replaced with 316 grade  stainless steel nuts and bolts,  new framing made from iroko and some beautiful unmarked pitch pine that Duggie rescued from the remains of the keel of a 1950’s  wooden Chris Craft motor yacht, and the whole lot bedded down in sikaflex rubber compound.  Teak picket fencing then attached to the framing using two inch stainless steel screws. We are going to let most of the teak weather and this will do away with the bi-annual sanding and painting ritual that we have carried on for the past thirteen years. Yes, it is thirteen years since we bought Swiftwing.

That’s all for now folks as there is much work to be done before we fly home again in two weeks.