"DSK" wrote in message

My wife has gone from racing tactician to teak nazi. Nowadays when we walk
around looking at boats, she is as likely to criticize the brightwork as
make a comment about the rig or design.

For her birthday or next Christmas, get her a copy of Rebecca Wittman's book
"Brightwork." A nice coffee table book as well as an anal retentive
brighworker's treatise. She'd love it, if she doesn't already have it.

And one thing we agree on (actually we agree on many things) is that we
have never seen a Cetol finish that looked as good as even a half-assed
varnish finish much less a good one. You can read a newspaper in the
reflection off our brightwork, which is not half-assed IMHO.

If Maxprop's boat has decent wood on it, she deserves better.

I really enjoy properly varnished teak, but my personal experience is that
teak is simply too oily to hold varnish properly in hot summer sunlight.
Mahogany is another story, and our former Mariner 31 ketch had
lovingly-varnished mahogany brightwork.

I'm probably a bit like your wife in my approach to varnish, but I prefer
Cetol simply because it lasts, and with minimal problems. It's a compromise
between work and appearance. I honestly believe that ours is the finest,
best-equipped Sea Sprite 34 in the country (it's one of the few
factory-completed boats, for starters), but it could be nicer, if we'd take
the time to varnish all the brightwork. But we enjoy our time off (it's
precious and scarce) too much to get anal about the wood's appearance.
Cetol, in the eyes of most people who walk the dock, does not detract from
the appearance of our boat. However that really does not matter to me.
What matters is keeping the wood 'healthy' and clean in appearance. And
Cetol Marine does all that and more. And it affords us the time to sail and
enjoy our all-too-brief summer seasons. Perhaps when we retire to Oriental,
we'll reconsider varnish for the brightwork.

Max