Teak deck refit and repairs

Send us photographs and we will tell you whether it needs recaulking, patching, or replacing. Including when the honest answer is that it has years left.

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Repair, recaulk or replace: how to tell the difference

Three outcomes, and the difference between them is worth a great deal of money.

Recaulking is the answer when the planks still have thickness above the seam and the substrate underneath is dry. The seams have failed, which they always do first, and nothing else has. It is the cheapest of the three by a wide margin, and the one most often deferred until it is no longer available.

Patching is the answer when damage is local and the rest of the deck is sound: a run of planks around a hatch, a corner that took a knock, an area under a fitting that leaked. New teak beside old will not match at first, and it evens out over a season or two.

Replacement is the answer when the wear is general rather than local, or when water has reached the substrate. At that point patching buys months rather than years, and every one of them is spent on a deck that is coming off anyway.

We do not settle this from a description. Send photographs.

Recaulk

The planks still have thickness left and the substrate is sound. Only the seams have failed.

Patch

Damage is local (a few planks, one hatch surround), and the rest of the deck has years in it.

Replace

The teak is below the seam line, or water has reached the substrate. Patching buys months, not years.

VERDICT A · KEEP IT

Signs your deck can still be saved

Caulk has lifted in patches, not along whole runs.
Planks still stand proud of the seam line.
Screw plugs are present and dry.
The deck sounds solid underfoot everywhere.
No water is showing below deck fittings.

VERDICT B · REPLACE IT

Signs it has to come off

Caulk has pulled away from the plank edge along whole runs, not just in patches.
Planks are below the seam line: the teak is thinner than the caulk is deep.
Screw plugs are missing or weeping black stains.
The deck sounds hollow underfoot, or moves when you press it.
Water is showing inside the vessel below deck fittings.

Recaulking a teak deck

Foredeck after recaulking and sanding, blue tape still around the margins

Caulk is a consumable. It is a flexible joint holding two moving pieces of timber apart while keeping water on top of the deck, and it does that in sun, salt and constant movement until it stops.

Recaulking means raking the old compound out of the seam, cleaning the plank edges back to bare teak, priming where the system requires it, and refilling. The critical part is the preparation. Caulk laid into a seam that still carries old compound or oil bonds to the contamination rather than to the plank, and it lifts again within a season, which is why a cheap recaulk is usually a recaulk done twice.

Before we recaulk, we check that there is enough teak left for the new seam to take properly. We recommend a minimum of 4–5 mm of sound wood; below that, a new seam has too little to hold on to.

Whole deck or partial depends on how the seams have aged. Where failure is spread across the deck, doing it in one go is cheaper per metre and gives a uniform result. Where it is confined to the areas that get walked on hardest, those runs can be done alone.

Recaulking gives the best return of anything on this page. It is also what owners most often put off until it has stopped being an option.

Plank replacement and patch repairs

Individual planks can be lifted and replaced without disturbing the deck around them. It is slow, detailed work, and on a bonded deck it means grinding the old plank and its adhesive out of a space that then has to stay clean for the new one.

Where it makes sense: local damage on a deck that otherwise has years left. Impact damage, a plank split around a fitting, an area patched badly before, the strip that always goes first at a hatch surround.

Where it does not: as a way of buying time on a deck that is generally worn. A new plank beside planks close to the seam line looks wrong, and leaves you with the same decision a season later, having paid for it twice.

New teak is lighter than weathered teak and stays visibly newer for a while. It closes over a season or two outdoors. If an exact match matters more than the repair does, say so early. Sometimes the right answer is to take a larger area than the damage strictly requires.

Full deck replacement

A full replacement is two projects sharing one schedule: taking the old deck off, and putting a new one on.

The first half is where the uncertainty lives. Old adhesive and fasteners have to come out completely, and the substrate underneath is not properly visible until they do. We quote the removal as a range and revise it once the deck is open, the first point at which the job can be priced rather than estimated.

The second half is predictable, deliberately. With the substrate faired and the deck open, templating is taken at its most accurate. The panels are then built, caulked and sanded in our workshop while the boat sits, and what happens on board is bonding and final detail rather than weeks of dust.

That split is the argument for prefabrication on a refit specifically. The unpredictable half stays on the boat. The rest moves to a workshop, where nothing depends on the weather.

TEAK DECK REMOVAL →PREFABRICATED PANELS →

How a refit is scoped and priced

Every refit is quoted per vessel. There is no price per square metre and no standard duration, because both depend on the same thing: what is found under the old deck.

A recaulk is the quickest option. Alongside it, damaged planks can be replaced by the metre, or whole segments of deck by the square metre. If what comes up shows water, corrosion or a soft core underneath, the job is recalculated: the substrate is repaired and levelled first, and only then does the new deck go down.

The schedule is not the same thing as the time on board. Templating happens first, the panels are built while the boat waits, and the fitting window itself is short. If the vessel has to be hauled, the yard’s calendar usually sets the dates rather than we do.

Two things extend a refit more than anything else: substrate damage that was not visible at survey, and decisions taken slowly once the deck is open. The first is unavoidable and should be budgeted. The second is avoidable, and the way to avoid it is to agree in advance what happens if we find wet core. We quote in two parts for exactly that reason.

Where we work

We work in Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, France and Greece, and anywhere else in Europe. We can build the panels and ship them, or come to the vessel and fit them ourselves. Most refits happen where the boat already is: in a yard, out of the water, on the yard’s schedule.

If the vessel lies further afield, the prefabricated route still works. You send templates or we arrange a survey, and your own yard bonds the finished panels. Distance changes who fits the deck, not who makes it.