09 February 2015
If
you are reading this in hopes of learning great amounts, it might be time to
disabuse you of that notion! There are
wonderful blogs out there that we have followed for years that teach, that
share hard earned knowledge and that pass out great wisdom. Maybe someday we will have learned enough to
help others on this same journey. For
the time being maybe we can just entertain a little as we muddle our way through the
learning curve, making mistakes – some dumb, some perfectly logical, so far none
that are disastrous. We are a little
less overwhelmed than on day one, we are able to laugh at some of the
challenges and are not too embarrassed to share some of our misadventures. Others you may not hear
about … at least for awhile. This one we
are willing to share.
 |
| The Scene of the Disappearance |
We
have two heads (marine toilets)
on board and each one has its own set of
problems. (wouldn’t you know it?) Up
front is a manual Jabsco. Pretty
straight forward – flushes with sea water either overboard or to a holding
tank. The holding tank can be emptied by
a pumpout system at a marina or pumped overboard via a macerator (think
blender). Our holding tank is a Nauta
bladder-probably an after- thought to comply with marine regulations where
pumping overboard is not allowed. It is
small (theoretically 15 gallons) except it is mounted vertically rather than
horizontally – a nod to not having much space – and therefore probably has only
a 10 -12 gallon capacity. That means
basically it needs to be pumped out every 3-4 days if used full time. It seems to have a small leak! (ugh) While tightening a fitting in hopes of fixing
it, Jim was leaning over and his glasses case, with his prescription glasses
inside, slipped out of his pocket and disappeared into the depths of the compartment
and presumably from there into the vast bilge system. Not good!
The
bilge is the lowermost part of the interior of the boat. In this boat it seems to consist of a number
of separate compartments connected by tunnels so that water in one compartment can flow
into another one and at the lowest point can be pumped out of the boat. Hoses run
through these and often the connections between the compartments are not
obvious. There are small fiberglass walls, dark nooks and crannies all over. It is a veritable maze. There
are a number of access doors through the floor and some walls which provide a lookout to check the status down below and gain access if necessary. I have never liked bilges, they are dark,
icky, and some seem to always have a little water in them. In general I would just as soon have nothing
to do with them. However, if water
decides to come into the boat I am very glad for it to have a place to go from which
it can be pumped right back out to where it belongs – outside the boat!! So... now you have a general idea of the abyss
into which the glasses case dropped.
We
searched high and low. Jim removed
various access covers, no luck. Even
with a 2 ft long magnet (the glasses case is metal) and a high powered
flashlight and an extra long mirror on a stick (imagine a dentist tool on
steroids) we had no luck finding it. How it
could have disappeared so quickly and so effectively is beyond us. In any case, if the fitting still leaks after
all this, Jim is not going to be happy. Actually
he is not happy anyhow, but if he solved the problem, the loss of the glasses might just have been the price to pay. Me? I expect them to show up somewhere, sometime…..
We
have a second head…and it has its own unique personality, but that is a subject
for another day.
