Tues Sept 15: Hanging in Deltaville waiting for toilet parts

 In which the Prince of Poop saves the day ...

Rick Speaking:

There are always new things to learn on a boat and usually it involves fixing something.  In the last couple of weeks we've had to fix the windlass, alternator belt, depth gauge, a circuit breaker for the stove and now the toilet is broken.  This marine "head" is a vacuflush toilet and it works by creating a vacuum in the holding tank so that when you flush the toilet everything is sucked down into the tank.  Like the toilet on an airplane that flushes with a big noise and rush of air.    So when Melanie mentioned a strong smell (for the third day in a row) I first checked how many days I had been wearing the same shirt - then I looked into the hold with the toilet equipment and you can guess what I found.   So I took apart the system and found that the vacuum bellows had torn and was leaking...so, no vacuum, no flushing. (Mel here - 'leaking' is the key word here -  so so gross....he gets so many points for doing such a thing)

Fortunately we now have this thing called the internet, and overnight delivery. Originally I called a local parts store and they said it would take 7 - 10 days to get the part.  I mean, 7 to 10 days without a toilet? Or 7-10 days in Deltaville?  Hard pass...  So I did a search online and found a place that would overnight the parts - and for a lower cost than the local parts supplier.  I don't know how ye olde boat owners lived without the internet and UPS overnight!   

The parts arrived by 2 pm and by 3:30 pm the system was put back together and we had a working toilet.   Oh, the other thing that the internet offers is YouTube.  You can find just about anything on YouTube and I watched a couple of videos on repairing a vacuflush toilet so putting it back together was pretty straight forward.

But we didn't rest on our laurels as there was more work to do.  The marina has a loner car and we took advantage to drive into town to restock our food supplies.  We drove the 1.5 miles to the only grocery store in town (to get to a 'known' grocery store chain - Food Lion in this case - was a 40 minute drive.  This place really is in the middle of nowhere) and found pretty much everything we need.  We stopped in a the Ace Hardware and hit the seafood market for some fresh dinner options.   And that about covered it. There wasn't anything more to see.  Even the few restaurants in town seemed to be closed or out of business.   

We drove back to the boat and decided to defrost the refrigerator!  This is something most people never do as refrigerators nowadays are frost-less..but the 12 volt DC refrigerator in this high humidity environment generates a large amount of frost/ice that needs to be melted every 3 to 4 weeks or the refrigerator loses efficiency....so hooray, we have to do that every few weeks.

With all this work to be done I'm going to need some serious boots:

While Deltaville is a working marina, as we mentioned yesterday, they do have a nice custom that we had not seen anywhere else; they maintain a big vegetable garden for the boat owners.  They had just torn out the summer vegetables prior to our arrival but they still had a bunch of okra for picking....too bad we don't like it very much. (Mel here - YUCKY! SLIMY!)  They were planting the fall garden - broccoli, cabbage, spinach, etc as we watched.  A very nice touch.

 

 

 

And, because we have no more pictures of Deltaville because there was no more to it, a picture of a dog (look closely) - if we ever get one it will be this breed...no need to clean up after it and no barking...

 

* Another thing we are beginning to notice is that the sunset is cloudy due to the smoke from the west coast fires.  We need to remember we are all connected...

** Also notable - I had to wear my fleece first thing in the morning!!!!  SO HAPPY