When we last spoke I was telling you about my hanging out in the Long beach area. I had been noticing a slight VERY SLIGHT leak coming from the base of my toilet. (On a boat the toilet is the “head.“ probably a play on words about the captain…). On my boat the head is a nice porcelain throne perched atop a square fiberglass holding tank. It is plumbed into the boat with a fresh water flushing supply tank, and a hose to a deck fitting to pump it out at the sanitation station at the marinas. The marinas have this big vacuum thing that you pull up to, attach to the deck fitting on your boat, turn it on, and in a few moments your head is sucked empty. Sort of like watching TV.. (my boat also has a means of “pumping it over the side” when out at sea, but that is not hooked up.

OK this next part is a bit gross. If you are squeamish about sewage please skip ahead (no pun intended…)

Anyway this leak was very small, coming from under the bottom of the tank. Maybe a teaspoon a day. (No I didn’t use a teaspoon to measure. Just very small. ) I figured I could easily go over to the pump-out station at Cabrillo to suck it all clean, lift the tank, squeeze some calking on it and be on my merry way.

I had pulled up to the Cabrillo pump-out station, done the deed, and after that phase 1 is completed the I usually then go below, pour a few gallons of water into the toilet and suck again to get it extra clean. This time there was a hose right there at the station so I stuck the hose in the cleanout fitting on deck for just a second, then attached the sucker to finish the job. When I went back down into the cabin I saw that the floor of the boat was covered with sewage, apparently from my putting the hose in that fitting and overflowing the tank. ARGH!!!! So here is the mystery. I am still not sure how this could happen because the tank is sealed, the flusher valve is sealed, I have no idea how that much “shtuff” could have flowed out of an “empty” tank and flooded my boat.

Boats have a low point below the floor called the bilge, where everything flows down into. Usually it would just be sea water when you spring a leak, or a big wave comes over the side, or you are just swabbing the deck. (yes we still swab decks…), but everything that comes in flows down there. There is an electric pump in the bilge with an automatic float valve that turns it on whenever there is anything to pump and ejects it out the back. Mine in brand new and has never been activated, except when I installed it and poured a bucket of water in there to make sure it works. Boy it was pumping to beat the band but kept clogging from the schtuff from the tank so I had to keep pulling it up out of the bilge, clearing the intake valve and putting it back in to pump some more. I grabbed the hose and started squirting everything down with fresh water, washing and rinsing and pumping and clearing. What a freakin mess. May I just ARGH once again? And throw in an “EEEEWWWW” for you ladies.

Eventually I got it the worst of it all washed out and pumped clear, but knew I had a another mess to fry. The toilet sits on a wooden floor that flattens out that part of the boat to put the toilet on. I knew that Schtuff must have flowed under that floor and it all had to come up. I called the marina office and asked for a guest dock to tie up to while I did all that had to be done. ( I think I probably could have done it all out at anchor but what I really wanted was a hot shower for when this was all done!!!)

I spent the next 7 hours tearing out the toilet and tearing up the floor and more rinsing and dowsing and bilging and clearing. You have no idea how gross it was. The only thing I can say is that it is a good that that my poop does not stink. Otherwise this would have been really gross. I did have a bottle of Clorox on board and able to do a final bleach rinse on the entire boat to make it all sweet and wonderful.

No Roto rooter dude ever had it this bad. The only thing I can compare this to was when dad jumped into the pig sewage lagoon in Lakeview to rescue a pig and come up covered from head to toe in pig Schtuff. The hot shower never felt so good.

I guess I could have put it all back together there at the guest dock in Cabrillo and continued on my way up the coast, but it would have been sort of a half baked job and I decided there were a few things I wanted to do that required stuff I had back in Dana so I headed back this morning.

The forecast was for a foggy morning, “then clearing about 9” and good winds from the west all day. Well they got the foggy part right. It was so thick I could not see across the channel less than 50 yards away. I headed out towards the breakwater very slowly, carefully, thinking by the time I got there it would be clear enough to continue safely but it actually got thicker so I motored back to the guest dock and had another cup of tea. It cleared off by about 10:00 and I cast off and headed out. There was no wind so I motored the whole length of Long beach harbor, 10 miles, before there was enough wind to sail and I had a great ride for about 2 hours. Then it slacked off so I fired up the motor again and steamed all the way back to Dana. I was keeping the option open to pull over in Newport (halfway) for the night if need be but I was able to motor at about 5 knots all day and pulled into Dana right at sundown. I am familiar enough with Dana harbor that even if I had to come in after dark it would have been OK, so I felt comfortable pushing it and just getting it over with in one day.

So over the next few days I need to repair the tank, re-paint all the wood, and put it all back together again. No problemo.