teak or stainless???

[jdair101]

Hi All
I have removed my weathered teak cabin top grab rails and can't decide to replace them with teak or stainless. My boat is a 1984 c&c 27 mkv and the spread for the mounting points is not "standard" so custom teak or stainless have to be made to replace them.
So---- what would you replace yours with if it was you???
And---where would you get them from???

Thanks
Jim

[sailingdog]

If you have a friend that does wood work, then teak would be the way to go. If you have to buy them custom made... you could go either way. I would go with stainless steel for two reasons—first, they're stronger, second they're lower maintenance.

It would help if you posted a photo of the cabintop. It would also help if you said where you and the boat were located, since a stainless steel fabricator may be local to you.

[teshannon]

To me teak has a much better look and should be strong enough. On the other hand if you have no other teak outside then it really doesn't matter which way you go.

[Omatako]

The mantenance level of teak depends on whether you varnish/oil or not. Naked teak is pretty maintenance free.

Stainless is harder to hold on to (slippery) but will shrug of that emergency little tie that you want to put on to it and won't sustian damage.

My rails are low down and are of little value unless you're crawling so I prefer stainless but the rest of the boat's trim would be a determining factor.

[Giulietta]

Here, is one of the items where I am most critical.

No matter how it looks and how safe it is. Cabin top rails IN MY BOATS are allways satinless steel.

I do love teak, I think its pretty and would look good....on other people's boats. Not on mine.

I believe that the cabin rails should be strong, they are the only STEADY safe feature for you to grab for dear life, it has to be strong if you need to attach a dinghy, or to grab someone that went overboard.

Mine are not only SS they are properly fitted with backing plates and are very strong. Its the rail of life, the real one.

No fancy wood for me there, no matter how you guys say its strong and safe. Its wood, it cracks, it rots it fails!!

[Faster]

On the C&C27 MkV there won't be a lot of teak elsewhere on deck. I'd be very tempted to go with stainless steel for the various reasons cited above.

Not everyone likes the weathered teak look, and the upkeep on handrails in particular can be onerous.

One more thought - our boat has stainless rails, and the manufacturer left them open at the ends... each can naturally lead a line from foredeck to cabin top aft. We have a downhaul through one rail and will soon have the furler line through the other. This is a typical Nicholson tactic... makes a lot of sense.

in the pic below you can see the aft end of what I mean.. portside the rail is used, to starboard you can see the end of the empty rail. They lead right down over the cabin to deck level forward.

[JohnRPollard]

Jdair,

As long as you have the handrails off, you could make a slight modification that would facilitate refinishing teak in the future. Instead of re-attaching a standard teak handrail with curved arches that land in teak bases that get attached flush to the cabin top, you might consider affixing some pads at the attachment points and then have a straight length of teak that mounts to the pads and which can easily be romoved for re-finishing. After that run-on sentence, I think you'll agree it's harder to explain than to show:


Pacific Seacraft 40

Of course, in the photo above this was incorporated into the design at the outset, but there's no reason it couldn't be retro-fitted. Spacing of the original mounts becomes irrelevant with this approach.

[Rockter]

Here are mine...

http://s217.photobucket.com/albums/c...Summer2007.jpg

They don't look as strong as stainless would be perhaps.

Rockter

[Quickstep192]

My boat is lavished with teak. I just got the estimate to re-do all of it. Once the paramedics got done reviving me, I realized how terrible it looks after several years of neglect. I love the look of a boat with traditional lines and lots of teak. My next boat will have little or no exterior teak.......

My handrails are pretty much to low to be of any use, but Giu is right; you don't want that thing snapping when you need it most. I've seen rails made of composite. Maybe that's a happy medium?

[sailingdog]

Most composites aren't strong enough IMHO to work as hand rails. Stainless steel is probably the best way to go.