I have a 382 and I started this project this last winter. I removed most all teak trim and doors in main salon and took them home and varnished them brignt. That was the easy part. The remaining trim--molding I did not want to pry off, I varnished in place. I took off all the fittings I could easily manage, but not the chain plates. I sanded everything that was dark teak--cabin sides, bulkheads, settee areas, etc. I put on a heavy undercoat and then industrial oil enamel from Sherwin Williams that I have used before at home. It was a lot of work, a lot of painting in crowded places--some very hard to get to, so I had to use artists brushes and not perfectly successfully. Over all the boat looks much better and the bright varnish against the bright white is tradition and what I grew up with on boats.
The down side: time, energy, frustration, leg and arm cramps. You have to bring down the overhead, or paint up to it and risk a gap. Plus I did this in winter when it was hard to keep the boat both heated and ventilated. The result is there are flaws in the paint job that, had I not run out of energy, I never would have accepted otherwise. The worst is the main settee bulkhead--the most obvious one, where no matter how I worked on it, the paint "ran." If I have time this fall, before hard weather sets in, I intend to redo that section, because it won't take too long and I want the biggest bulkhead to look the best. I want to do the galley, nav station next, but I am not sure I have the heart and time to do it this winter. The forecastle comes last, and will in some ways be the hardest because of the strange corners and cramped space. Frankly, were I still a batchelor or were my children older, the job would have been done much quicker--but there are only so many hours a father of a five and two year old can be--or wants to be--away from home and his children.
