My job for the week was to remove Good Omens' portlights and prepare them for reinstallation after Mark Perry's incredibly capable team of boatsmiths had replaced the old, sodden, teak trunk sides with new, gleaming slabs of white plastic. White plastic in place of gleaming, warm teak seems odd, I know. Removing, cleaning and rebedding all fourteen portlights is a big, dirty job and I didn't want to do it again in my lifetime. A teak replacement for the original teak would have guaranteed repeating the job in another ten or fifteen years. Yes, that seems like a long time, but I would dread it every day of every year until it had to be done again. The problem with teak around the portlights is that it eventually turns black through contact with salt water.

It doesn't matter how well the portlights are installed, how much BoatLife (not 3M 5200) is used to bed them, how fanatical is the attempt to keep the ports closed when sailing. They will leak. They will leak and slowly turn the lovely warm hue of carefully oiled teak into a black, gnarly mess. White plastic isn't phased by salt water. It gleams white every day of its intended life expectancy, which, as far as I can tell, taking into account the natural decay of this particular plastic, coupled with global warming and the hole is the ozone layer, is about five thousand four hundred eighty six years. Give or take a day.

But in order to get the gleaming whiteness in place the old nasty teak must come out. For the teak to come out the portlights must be removed and cleaned. My job, for the entire week I was in Rhode Island, was to remove and clean the portlights. There's no great skill involved in removing portlights; that's why I decided it was the job for me. The portlights in question are oval bronze contraptions with six to nine bolts (depend on the size of the light) that go through the trunk sides to a bronze backing plate on the outside of the boat. Removing them requires first opening the port light. This step sometimes involves a prise bar and a bit of shouting. The prise bar is used to pop the window portion of the port light open, while the shouting seems to aid in loosening the gasket material through sonic shock.

With the window open, a 7/16ths (your size may vary) socket wrench is placed on the inside nut of a bolt while a 7/16ths closed wrench is placed on the outside head of the same bolt. Having each wrench on the same bolt is very important. Once the wrenches are in place simply remove the nut from the bolt. Repeat this step for each bolt on the portlight. See how easy this is? Definitely not a task to pay someone else to do. Definitely a task to do yourself by leaving your warm Florida home to spend a week in the freezing climes of Rhode Island with a rental car of questionable dependability and a motel room.

The fun really starts when it's time to remove the portlight from the cabin trunk. The bolts holding the portlight in place are really more cosmetic than mechanical. They hold the portlight in place while the massive gobs of bedding goo placed between the portlight and the cabin trunk hardens into a slightly malleable cement. It's really the bedding goo that keeps the portlight in place and watertight. Thus, it takes an enormous amount of patience and determination to actually remove the portlight from the cabin trunk without destroying both in the process. The trick is a very sharp, very strong prise bar. Gently pounding the sharp end of the prise bar between the outter rim of the portlight and the inside of the cabin trunk will eventually unseat the bedding goo's terminal grip and allow evacuation of the one from the other. Some screaming seems to help as well. Once all fourteen of the portlights were finally removed using this process it was cleaning time.

It took roughly two full days to remove all fourteen portlights. It's an experience I wouldn't trade for anything, except perhaps a holiday weekend in Jonestown. But, through it all the team at Quality Yacht Services kept me sane, warm, and alive.