About Marelle

Marelle is a 36 foot teak classic yacht designed by McGruer in 1965 and built by Deacons Boatyard, on the Hamble River.

We bought her in November 2010 and brought her back home to the Hamble.  We are currently working on a major refit at Universal Metre Shed.

 We wanted to re-varnish Marelle, as she had Epifanes RapidCoat varnish applied which includes a stain that had hidden the grain of the wood.  The surveyor had noticed some splines that had moved - this is where the glue holding the spline to the neighbouring planks fails - and while not structural, he advised us to get the splines re-made before re-varnishing as any subsequent movement would damage the finish of the varnish.

Martin had a month off work in March 2011, and stripped all the varnish off from the hull, then sanded very carefully and thoroughly.  Owen from the Metre Shed then re-splined Marelle's hull in new teak splines - a very skilled job.  There were more splines needed than we had originally thought, as tends to happen, but they needed doing and unless you know where they were, you now can't tell.


While we had the varnish stripped off, we decided to get the other damaged areas repaired - at the stem a previous repair was redone in afrormosia to match the original wood, and on the bow a piece of mahogany used in a former repair had rotted so we had it replaced in teak along with a repair to the toe-rail at the bow - only one side needed doing so we now have teak to port and mahogany to starboard at the bow roller!

The other major repair was the starboard toe-rail under the bronze genoa track.  Previous damage - a split in the toe-rail from the forces acting on the track - had been roughly repaired with the track simply screwed back in place.  The whole track was removed, and the damaged toe-rail cut out and replaced with a large piece of teak that had to be colour-matched to the 1965 teak around it, and shaped to fit the curve of the boat in three directions.  While doing this, it was discovered that the bronze track was actually bolted through the toe-rail into galleries accessible behind cut-outs in the cove line, as this picture shows.

We have also taken all the stanchions off and had new wooden bases made, and new bolts.  The survey highlighted a few that were allowing water to leak through the bases, but we decided to get them all done as we wanted to varnish the toerail and the margin board to protect these areas properly, and get them looking good alongside the re-varnished hull.  Some stanchions have had to be replaced, as they were so battered it was not worth cleaning them up.  We got all the stanchions and metal bases cleaned and polished - and found that the bases are actually bronze so have come up very shiny!  We are still debating how to re-fix the bolts for the stanchions so that they are easier to remove than they were this time.

After consulting widely on the right varnish to use for teak - notoriously difficult to get anything to stick to - we have gone for a thorough de-greasing with Epifanes Spray Thinner followed by 11 coats of Epifanes PP Extra, then as many coats as we can get on of Epifanes Clear Gloss (we are currently up to 3 of this but hope to get to 9 by the time Marelle goes back in the water).  Here's a photo of how she's looking now.