Friday, Oct. 19

Sue is improving, but I am I doing a quick blog update until she has a chance to do a post. 

Do you remember seeing that funny “Stool Bus” picture with our “GTB to Paris Landing to Pebble Isle”  post? You know what? That is only funny if you are outside the bus!!! Let me explain.

We pulled into Aqua Harbor Marina near Iuka MS around 4:30pm October 17. We had a good trip from Clifton but ran a little slow to manage some vibration in the starboard transmission. We got to the fuel dock, took on fuel and began to pump out the holding tank. (For non-boaters – every boat inside the 3-mile limit of the coast is required to have a holding tank for sewage. Beyond that limit you can discharge into the ocean. We have a 50-gallon tank, making us a floating, 30,000-pound port-a-potty.) 

All major marinas have a pump out system to easily pump-out holding tanks. The marina worker at the fuel dock began the pump out process, but thought things were not right. He thought it might be a good idea to add some water to the tank to get things moving better. I thought that made sense. He put a water hose in the extraction connection and went off to attend to another customer. After a few minutes, we had a problem. Sewage began to back up through the aft head (toilet).   We shut off the hose immediately, but already had a mess. Attempts to use the normal pump-out system failed to produce results.  The fuel dock closed at 5:00pm, so we had to move along to our assigned slip and wait to meet with the service department in the morning. The evening was spent on an unpleasant clean-up detail. Fortunately, the marina has public restrooms on land, but they are a long walk in the middle of the night.

I met with the service manager at 8:30 the next morning. We had originally called a couple days ago to have them look at the transmission vibration issue, but they quickly agreed that the holding tank problem needed immediate attention. They had a technician (Marcus) over to the boat before 10am to begin carefully sorting out the problem. I stress “carefully”, because the tank and all the associated connection hoses were completely full. (Sue: Also, all of that is directly under the floor of our cabin and accessed at the foot of our bed. UGH!) A bad decision could have easily filled our bilge with a lot of sewage (black water in “boat talk”). He was able to slowly remove the excess water from the holding tank vent line and extraction line using a specially designated shop vac (clearly marked s*** - only). We used some spare sewer hose I had on board to make temporary connection directly to the holding tank. Marcus then brought over their portable pump-out barge (see photo), hooked up the vacuum pump to the temporary connector and successfully pumped out the tank. A blockage in the extraction line was removed and a couple hours of cleanup hopefully solves the issue for good. The process took about 5 hours.

Lesson: Being outside the “Stool Bus” is much better than being in it!

On the mechanical side, the starboard engine was slightly out of alignment. Marcus was able to get it re-aligned.  We are doing a test run today to see how things look. 

While looking the engines over, I spotted an oil leak near the starboard raw water pump. It is probably an oil seal in need of attention. That is a new item for the list.

(Sue:  Marcus is amazing! He did a phenomenal job getting our hoses & tank cleaned out with no indoor mess! He must be extremely tolerant of olfactory abuse or he has no sense of smell at all. Also, a thousand thanks to Brian who did all of the other bilge & stinky clean-up – another amazing job that he has done on the boat!!)