Paying the Adventure Tax

They say everything on your boat is broken, you just don’t know it yet. Our most recent boat projects have certainly made this common saying feel all too true.

Making Windlass Parts with an Angle Grinder

For several weeks, our windlass had some intermittent issues. Some days it was slow and sounded like it was working too hard. Other days it worked perfectly. The symptoms indicated that it was likely worn-out brushes causing the issues. Luckily, the Frick parents were kind enough to let us ship new brushes their way so they could bring them down when they visited.

We quickly replaced the brushes as soon as they arrived. Things worked great at first but then we started blowing the fuse every time we used the windlass. The motor was heating up so much you could smell it in the nacelle locker. After deconstructing the whole thing for the third time, we ended up with a combination of the old brushes and the new ones.

On the third round of dismantling of the motor, we also managed to lose the small key that connects the motor to the gearbox. Without this piece, the motor runs but the gypsy doesn’t spin.

We took every bit of our 100 meters of chain out of the nacelle locker, hoping to find the key resting at the bottom. While this was quite the bicep workout, it did not help us find the missing key.

The final option was to manufacture a new piece out of something we had laying around. We tore through our boxes of spare parts. Tom ended up cutting down a stainless-steel screw to fit in the space that we needed to fill. He also got to use his new angle grinder for the first time so he was pretty pumped about that!

While it’s not perfect, the windlass is working again (for now).

The Exploding Head (toilet)

There’s no doubt that dealing with blackwater plumbing is the nastiest job on a boat. On the morning we were scheduled to pick up Tom’s sister for five days aboard, we had a clog in the sanitation line on the owner’s side.

As Tom worked on the toilet, trying to dislodge the clog, he managed to create too much pressure in the line. This pressure inverted the joker valve and caused the line to backup violently as he was standing over the toilet.

It got everywhere! I won’t get into all the gruesome details but let’s just say there was legitimate concern he’d get pink eye.

After washing off a bit, he ran the dinghy over to the beach to pickup our guest, smelling like a sewer. There’s no better introduction to real boat life than a warm, smelly boat!

Tom fixed the broken joker valve and spent hours trying to dislodge the clog without any luck. Luckily, we have two heads on the boat to get us by until we could find a solution. The next day, we ran over to the NAPA / General Store to look for replacement hose without any luck.

On the third day, we moved within dinghy distance to Brown’s Marine. The name of this chandlery was fitting for the problem we were trying to solve. It was also our only remaining hope to find 20 ft of new sanitation hose and they opened a whole new box just for us!

We closed off both ends of the old hose, attached a tracer line for the new hose and pulled it out through the shower porthole. Next, we attached the tracer line to the new hose, pulled it through the bilge, cut it to size and secured it in its place. Four days later, we finally had a working head again!

Tom’s sister had quite the introduction to boat life and was such a good sport about it all. We laughed so hard at the exploding toilet situation that we all cried. It’s certainly a story we will all tell years from now.

Nobody hides from the adventure tax. It’s the price we pay to live on the water and travel to these beautiful places.

We were over the hustle and bustle of George Town several weeks ago and very eager to move to our next destination. In retrospect, we are so grateful that these issues happened here and could be dealt with while we had access to supplies.

This is also a friendly reminder that social media is mostly a highlight reel. We do our best to share the highs and the lows. Some days are breathtakingly beautiful and others we’re quite literally dealing with shit. The only hope is for more good days than bad.