Thompson's Water Seal Deck Report

The old teak decks on Drift Away leak, pretty badly in a few places.   Pam has been working at digging out the old sikaflex caulk and recaulking it, but it's a slow, arduous process.   Meanwhile, the decks leak.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided to experiment with Thompson's Advanced Formula Water Seal and sealed the flybridge deck.  If it didn't work, I'd simply fiberglass it over.  I made sure to really glop it into the places where the caulk was missing and where the bungs covering the screws were gone.  Thompson's worked beautifully and stopped all the leaks.    After a couple of weeks, though, we found a very small leak and so I applied a second coat and the leak stopped.

I then did the aft deck and the port side deck, and again it worked great.

The Thompson's made the old worn teak look much better.  You can see how the water is beading up and running off.

I decided to do the foredeck and grabbed another jug at the local True Value.  When I got home and opened it, I noticed the sealer looked different.  Instead of a yellowish color, this was a thin milky white.   Looking at both jugs, I noticed that the first was "Natural Wood Protector" and the second "Clear Multi-Surface Waterproofer".  Cripe.  You'd think they'd put them in different color jugs, or at least make the label clearly different.

Reading the directions, it said it worked on stone and masonry and also wood.  So having great confidence in Thompson's, I applied it to the foredeck.  It went on the same, but as it dried, it didn't look very good and had a mottled appearance.   It rained pretty hard here on Saturday, and the second product didn't work at all.

As the photo above shows, the rain penetrated right through the water seal, which is bad enough, but the stuff also looks really bad.  There is no way the multi-surface stuff should be used on wood, or at least on teak.   Now I'm wondering whether I'll be able to apply the wood protector (the good stuff) over it.  I emailed Thompsons last night and I'm waiting for their advice.  I'll let you know what they say.