Weather to Varnish

We English like to talk about the weather, in fact a lot of the time we like to complain about the weather and rightly so as those prevailing south westerly winds bring rain, wind and overcast skies more often than not.

That all said, since September we’ve been enjoying an Indian Summer with many fine settled and even windless days.



All of which sounds ideal, but for owners of varnished wooden boats it’s something of a dilemma. Do you make the most of these fine days before the inevitable onset of winter to take the boat out or do you take the opportunity of the settled weather to get a couple of coats of varnish on before it’s too cold and wet?



Those who can afford to have the yard put the boat in the heated shed for a couple of weeks, can ignore this post, they will be out sailing if they have any sense, but alas they may just be too busy earning the money to pay the yard…..

My own take on this is, if it’s varnished then it needs to fit in the garage over winter, that way I get to go sailing during our precious summer months.

Maybe the title of this post should have been “Whether to Varnish”



As an interesting diversion I looked up the origin of Indian Summer which is a North American term, in England and indeed Europe, France especially the phenomenon was know as Saint Martin’s Summer.