Thursday, March 5, 2020

The Dirty Side of Boating

05 March 2020

One of the places that is most distasteful to me is the bilge.  This is an area underneath the flooring that forms a gutter from the front to the back, where stray water collects, (where Jim loses his glasses), where anything leaking can find a place to hang out (gas, oil, transmission fluid, though hopefully not very much or there are some other significant problems)  We have four access doors to check all areas of the bilge. The center of the boat, ie the deepest part of the bilge, is where most things collect. It is there that we have two bilge pumps and were we to spring a leak, they would get a good workout pumping the water out. It tends to be grimy, slimy, oily, and ugly.  This year I decided I would clean it out and paint it which would improve it mightily.  I confess that I could barely look at it, but Jim volunteered to clean out most of the gunk and liquid.  The rest I managed to deal with and proceeded to put on two coats of bilge paint.  I wish I had taken a "before" picture, but I didn't so you cannot possibly appreciate just how wonderful it looks now!!

Cleaned and Painted Bilge

There is a dirty word in the sailing world.  A nautical four letter word if you will.  "Schedule"  Schedules might work on land where one has a little more control, but when sailing, we are dependent on weather, winds, waves, tides and the smooth functioning of the boat.   It has never been too much of an issue with us as we have pretty much done just coastal cruising.  We have had only a few visitors and coordinating their schedule with ours has not been difficult.  This year is a little different.  We have a deadline for getting back to Minnesota, (deadline is almost as bad a word as schedule) and we had planned to go to the Bahamas.  As the project list has expanded, our departure from the boatyard has been pushed later and later.  Given that we have already misssed one weather window for leaving the boatyard, (tides and winds are cruicial) and are just about to miss another and the fact that we still have a lot to finish up and given the uncertainty of waiting for a weather window to cross the Gulf Stream on the way to the Bahamas and back again, our length of time to spend in the Islands is dimishing.  We have done quite a bit of preparation already for this trip, so it is a little discouraging to think that we might not be able to go.  No decision yet, but it is looking grim. 

Another "dirty" aspect of sailing is he head (toilet) although quite necessary.  We actually have two onboard, a manual one forward and an electric one aft which is part of an onboard sanitation system.  For awhile, neither one was working right.  The aft one which just had a fresh water leak has been fixed, but the manual one is blocked up.  We have a somewhat complicated system of hoses which provide a variety of options for where the waste goes:  into a holding tank, directly overboard, to the holding tank and then through a macerator then overboard, to the holding tank then to the pumpout boat (or station).  No toilet paper goes into the toilet, but apparently urine and saltwater (which is used to flush) create calcium which then builds up inside the hose -  think plaque in the arteries!  So eventually the hose gets smaller and smaller and eventually closes up..and voila a plugged up toilet hose.  Because of the complicated running of the hoses and "Y" valves, there are many possible spots for blockages and no straight runs for a snake.  So Jim has been working for a number of days on it, in fits and spurts with no real success.  In the meantime the whole boat is strewn with a variety of tools, as well as things that had to be removed from the bathroom to make space to work. Jim is nothing if not tenacious and methodical, and in the end he will prevail, but this is really getting tiresome.  (I am not unaware that it is worse for him!!)  But, when I asked if he was having fun yet, he said "sure".  

So there you have it.  We feel lucky to be where we are, doing what we are doing, enjoying warm weather and the boating lifestyle.  



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