Cleaning....

Certainly not the most exciting thing to do but every time I touch a surface dirt or paint chalk comes off on my hands. So today I spent several hours just cleaning. First came the mast and I attacked it with a hose, simple green in a squirt bottle , bristle brush,  a green scrubby pad. As I washed I inspected and liked what I saw. It was built in 1992 by Annapolis Spars Inc and is in generally great condition. The white paint is chipped in many spots all the way through the green primer to the aluminum but it's not bad enough to be stripped and redone. I may get some white Rustolium and touch it up but probably just wax it and be done. About the only real problem is the missing lower pins on the rigging. The yard managed to loose them all! 

Seriously moldy Main and Jib halyards

Then I climbed up and started on the cockpit. The entire boat is covered with at least 12 years of air pollution. Being on the hard near a major airport sucks. Those jets will turn a boat black in just a few weeks, so Phoenix took a ton of elbow grease just to get part of the cockpit cleaned up. The nonskid holds on to that junk tight. 

Even the topsides look better when cleaned:)

Starboard cockpit locker getting cleaner.

I got bored scrubbing and decided to see how simple green would work on seriously dirty teak.  Well it kinda works, but I broke down and mixed up an batch of water(3 qts)/TSP(1 cup)/clorox(2 cups) and that mix really does the trick! Still a lot of elbow grease but wow the results are great. After cleaning up the starboard coaming I can see doing some sanding and varnish. Really I'm too lazy to keep the teak clean and let it go silver because that also means black mold. I like the look of silver/gray teak but not when it's covered with black mold, which turns green when wet. Now that's ugly. But now that I've cleaned it up I suppose I need to finish the job and varnish. Certainly not the most important job, but having pretty teak and a clean hull make it more of a pleasure to work on the must have done list:)

A nice shade of green mold.

Mold does't look so bad when dry.

TSP/Water/Clorox quickly turns a nice shade of brown.

Left side(aft end) cleaned with TSP, Right side gets it next.