I didn't take any pictures. And the pics online don't show the bad stuff. Some of the "planks" are gone. Some have lifted. At the deck fittings, you can see roughly 1/4" difference between the height of the
wood under the fitting and the height of the wood around the fitting. The
broker said the owner sanded the decks "when needed".
Yesterday we looked at a 2002
Sabre 452 that looked like it just came off the production line. It was almost as nice as the 2013
Sabre 456 we saw at the
Annapolis Boat Show. Pretty much flawless. The 452 was in
Washington state until recently when the owner shipped it to south
Florida. My SO fell in love with it. As weird as this may seem, it was too perfect for me.
I can't help thinking that for the
price of that boat, we could buy the Oyster and probably replace the deck and repaint the
hull and still have some change left over. The Oyster is six years older but after replacing the deck and painting the
hull, she'd be near perfect and a better
liveaboard and long term cruiser. Though my SO complained about the
headroom.
I'm a woodworker because I love the look of real wood and get great pleasure creating things out of wood. Part of me thinks if I can build guitars from scratch I should be able to do teak decks. But I have to admit, outside of making the planks, I really don't know what else is involved or if it's at all a reasonable
project for one person to tackle and on such a big boat.
I'm thinking we'll be in
Florida for at least a couple of years before we do any serious cruising. Even if the deck
project took me a year, I'd be fine with that. I just don't know if the
work can be done in small sections. Anyway, that's where I was originally going when I saw the boat. After some thought, my biggest concern was all the other things involved after I made the deck planks. I'd want it to look factory installed.
But if we decided to replace the teak with non-skid, I'd hire someone to do it. I'd just hate to lose that beauty.
skipmac, you're pretty much of the same mindset I am. And the more I think about it, the more I think synthetic teak would devalue the boat.
The broker said patch the bad spots but I can't see that working. You'd have to lay in planks half the original thickness.