Garry’s Friday night was spent installing the 5 new batteries Chris had taken Garry to collect, thanks Chris. In no time at all the new batteries were connected to the house bank and being charged from shore power we were not entitled to use ! whoops.
We hatched a plan to leave the boat as soon as the mosquitoes would let us in the morning and go collect the Macerators. Then spend the day installing all 3 so we would have working toilets.
It was a lovely 35 minute walk to collect the Macerators, the sun was shining we had a great feeling it was going to be a good day. On our return we started to set our plan in motion to change all three toilets today.
Garry switched off all stop cocks then started to remove the pipes which was disgusting, actual shit ran out. Their is a saying clean up your own shit but really this was someone else’s.
I took the bowl and pipes upstairs, started the cleaning process removing the water stains and grime from years of use. Rinsing out the pipes a decision was made to change as previous owner had cobbled together some piping so it worked. The screws that held the bowl in place Garry also decided their was a better way to secure the bowl and Macerator in place.
Soon the memories of all those You Tube videos came flooding back ……. boat jobs takes at least 3 times longer than planned.
Not only have you got no space to work, the ramming yourself into small spaces takes time, effort and getting yourself out too without getting stuck. You also never realise that the people who fitted the toilet had done such a bad job the last time.
You start to need difference parts that are not on the boat and then with no car to use to visit a shop or chandlers this trip takes a lot more than 5 minutes.
By the end of the 1st day we had managed to bodge one toilet in place which on trying the switch still did not work PMSL. Knowledge was going to needed so we ventured out quite close to mosquitioes time to visit Peter a lovely Polish chap who had his family living on the hard in the dock.
After a quick up date of how the day had gone he said he would pop around to the boat and have a look. Peter and his wife arrived as the mosquitoes started to appear from nowhere, we invited them in and shut the hatch. To Peter’s Wifes amusing I then got my electric fly squat bat out and started to exterminate the little shits that had managed to muscle their way in before I closed the hatch.
Peter got down to sourcing the problem, whilst Garry made tea and I gave the normal boat tour to someone new on your boat. As it turns out the sea cock was blocked and was not letting the sea water into the toilet, a simple hose on pipe and ram water through solves that problem.
After one long day’s work we have one toilet working so we cracked out the beers to reward ourselves and sat their thinking the next two toilets are going to be more of a challenge as the rooms are a lot smaller.
It took 3 days to complete this originally one day job and a big lesson was learnt, be more prepared.