Head Issues...

Now that we are on the boat and out of the van we can use the heads on the boat. As you may know, bathrooms on boats are called “heads” because, according to the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia, back in the days of the tall sailing ships, all vessels placed their bathrooms at the front (the bow, or Head) of the ship. (The "Head" also is a reference to the ornate decorations of Mermaids found on the bow of many vessels). As the wind would come from behind the boat, fill the sails and move the ship, the smell would move away from the vessel.

Well, our manually operated heads have issues. I’ll spare you the engineering marvel that is the modern marine toilet (really interesting, actually) but the pump systems on both heads need to be rebuilt and we had significant leaks in the hoses that brought water in to flush and take waste out. Since leaks are a big deal on the boat, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to replace both hoses yesterday. Neither hose was hard to work with but one of them, guess which one, was a little more “interesting” than the other.

Here are some photos…

Both leaky offenders. The first leak is the hose on the left under the pump handle. This is basically water from outside the boat. The other leak is the connection to the top of the through hull barely visible on the left inside the cabinet. This leak comes directly from the toilet when the toilet is pumping overboard and not into the holding tank.

Here is a close up of the leaky through hull hose that runs from the toilet directly overboard. You can tell from the, let's call it "crud", on the top that it had existed for some time.

I started off with a very sanitary approach wearing gloves and using germ killer.

The sanitary approach gave way to excitement when I was able to get the poo hose off after heating it with a heat gun.  Smells great, lemme tell ya.

Close up look right down the poo hose! I had to sterilize myself after this photo but it was worth it.  :> I'm going to  make this photo Molly's screen saver. She's sooo lucky!