Toilet Revisited
Two of the seacocks that allow water to go in and sewage to go out of the toilet have been seeping since the day that the boat went in the water. I managed on the day to limit it a bit but it is still not dry after 4 weeks. I like a dry boat so something needed to be done about it.
Now let me explain I how this works for the uninitiated. When I bought the boat I didn’t like the state of the sewage seacock because it was very hard to close and open it. And you do need to do this regularly when you leave the boat to make sure that not water flows out of the toilet and sinks the boat! So I replaced almost all the seacocks asince a lot of them were a bit dodgy.
How does this work? Please look at the diagram below:
Note that there are three parts that are screwed into each other and every part’s connection can leak. The seacock comes with a handle that allows you to close it, in that case you can take the adaptor and hose off and work on those parts. In my case the leak/seep was between the through-hull fitting and the seacock, which means that you have no way from inside to keep the water out, so you either have to dive down and put a plug in the fitting, or get the boat back out of the water. Given the conditions with currents and visibility and other hazards in this marina, I opted for the expensive option to get the boat back out of the water for just an hour.
Yesterday I borrowed some tools I lacked from Alba Sailing whom are absolutely great people and I managed to get the hoses off the adaptors. Now, in theory, I only needed an hour to change the seacocks and put a generous amount of PTFE tape on to stop the leaks. And I waited to be lifted out till almost the end of the day! I thought it was never going to happen. But instead they lifted me out at the last moment to keep me dry until Monday morning.
BUT . . .
While I was taking the hoses off, I noticed that the wood scaffolding for the toilet seat was soaking wet! What on earth did I discover now? Panic! The boat is leaking water from an unknown place. I checked all the ins- and outs of the toilet, the hoses and everything was dry. Where was this water coming from! Somewhere below the toilet…
After sitting down and thinking it over logically, I came to the conclusion that the one of the old hoses that takes the sewage out must have cracked because it was caught tightly between to wooden planks but the only way to find out was to undo all the connections for and take the whole toilet out!
So today I fixed the seacocks first:
Then I took apart the toilet and started dragging out the sewage hoses with the anti-siphon:
Of course some smelly water leaked out of these plus some seawater from the other hoses. So after I carefully plugged the stinky hoses I managed to drag them out of the boat. Then I cleaned and disinfected it thoroughly with some Domestos diluted with hot water:
Then I took advantage of the fact that the boat was out and add some more anti-fouling on the propellor and rope cutter.
Since it is a bit of a mess inside the boat and I want to have it all drying out overnight with the heater on, I took the offer from the Wide Mouthed Frog owner to use one of his rooms tonight (see Bartering). Tomorrow I will put the toilet back together again so that Monday, when hopefully all is well, I can connect the hoses to the outside and use the toilet again (on a dry boat?).
