In the run-up to the big day a lot of little things needed to be fixed on My Lizzy. Boats, as many of you know, break more from disuse than use. Grrr. So in a flurry of late activity, I resolved a bunch of issues. In addition, I made sure we had as much weight on the vessel as possible to create a long, tall wake. I filled the fuel tanks, which adds about 5600 lbs and costs an average mortgage payment. I filled the fresh water with another 1500 lbs. And a few weeks prior I made sure the holding tanks were empty, which, unfortunately, trimmed about 500 lbs. Lots of surfers means lots of, well, you know, lots of crap (literally and figuratively).
As I was checking all the systems I noticed that my holding tank gauges had gone a bit wonky. Like my fresh water gauge was only reading 25% and the holding tank said 100%. Mentally, I'm thinking, great, another thing to fix. Add to punch list. Nice. Two steps forward, one step back. But I forge ahead. I fix the heaters, I fix the bilge pumps, I fix the lights, I fix a fresh water leak on the washdown faucet. I'm making tons of progress and all is going very well.
On the Saturday before our outing the crew, lead by Mike Chinn, washed and cleaned the vessel inside and out. She was standing tall, as they say (but, uhm, not me because that's so cheezy).
So Sunday morning as oodles of people starting showing up and we're preparing for a great day of surfing I notice one small omission. There is no marine toilet paper. The vessel has two vacu-flush heads. These are fine marine heads, but they're exceptionally allergic to things like Kleenex, regular household TP and especially Tampax. But we can't hold up a session for that. Instead, against my better judgement, I pull some regular 2-ply down from the house and then promptly warn everyone not to flush the TP in the heads. Just put it in the waste baskets. And especially, for the girls, no feminine products in the head. Everyone understood.
We head out. We surf. It was great. Here is a GoPro POV video Jonny Curto shot.
Everyone surfed until they could surf no more. At lunch, we headed to Carillon Point in Kirkland to pick-up the Rockstar guys (awesome!) and, while there, grab some marine toilet paper. Why not! Even though I knew everyone was going to follow the simple rule of no flushing the 2-ply TP, I figured it was a 2-fer. We grab a season's supply of TP and off we go for more surfing.
At the end of the day the group was thinning out and we headed back to the dock. On the way back we pretty much whipped everything into shape. By the time we pulled into the dock I'm marveling over how My Lizzy is now in better shape after the first weekend of yachtsurfing than she'd been all Winter.
Then reality set in. As I was sending off the remaining crew I heard a sound. Boats are all about sounds. If you hear a sound you haven't heard or don't expect, it's bad. Trust me.
So I poke my head down the stairs towards the staterooms. Sure enough, I hear one of the vacuum pumps from one of the heads running. Not good. So I quickly proceed to the breaker box and turn off the afflicted pump. Oops. Wrong one. I turn that one back on and the other off. Opps, still a problem. Then I turn both off. Noise gone. Diagnosis. I'm screwed. Both heads are fouled. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!!! There is no worse job than fixing a vacu-flush. It involves latex gloves and a strong stomach.
But then I'm thinking, the odds of a single head failing are, maybe, 5%. But the fact that both heads were out at the same time, given that they are completely independent vacuum pumps, the odds are a quarter of 1% (0.25%). In other words, it's not really all that probable. Dismissing this otherwise lucid thought I rationalize to myself, you know, maybe somone flushed a tampon or some of that 2-ply TP in each of the heads. Not all that implausible I figure. What do I do? Ignore logical side and proceed with my gut and start diagnosing the first head.
Now this ain't my first rodeo with the vacu-flush pumps. I've pulled shtuff out of these things before. Donned with latex gloves and my favorite new 808 t-shirt from Maui I pull the first hose off the pump. Keep in mind, this hose should be full of air. But, just to play it safe, I lay a towel over it. You have to wriggle the hose a bit and then it pops off. This time, gush! And I mean gush, gush, gush. Black water (that's the nautical term for boat sewage) gushes out, blows the towel up and all over my upper torso and face. I marveled as this thing just kept gushing. It's a 3 inch hose and it seemed to last forever.
Shower #1.
With that done, I resume disassembling the first vacuum pump. Huh, no clog?!?!? How could that be? Reassemble pump one and turn on the pump. It's no longer having a problem achieving a vacuum. This is not bad news.
So I move to pump number 2. This time, armed with the notion that I could be sprayed with shite, I protect myself. I wriggle off the hose, no gushing fluid and, more ponderously, no clog. I put it back together, turn on the breaker and it too is no longer having a problem. This is not bad news either.
So is it upstream or downstream? I go downstream to another pump. But now I'm getting stupid. I decide to detach the hose to the pump that discharges the waste overboard. Why? Don't ask me. I'm covered in crap at this point and really don't know why it could be clogged where it is because it has to be to the entrance of the holding tank at this point. But that should be open. How can that possibly clog? I'm thinking this will be dry as the real clog is probably way upstream. But an upstream clog from each of the vacuum pumps is much harder to reach. If you're 3 foot 4 inches and are the diameter of a toilet paper tube you could wriggle into the space where you could diagnose and repair that. Needless to say I'm a tad larger so was looking for some other confirmation.
Armed with this flawed reasoning I proceeded to loosen a 3rd hose and was rewarded with a second round of sewage explosion. Face, neck, chest. Nice.
Shower #2.
Then it hit me. No, not sewage. Maybe the holding tank is full. Maybe the holding tank gauge was telling me the truth. Going with that, I was perplexed with the "how". How could it be full? I had just pumped it out a couple of weeks earlier. There was no activity on the boat since. Hmmm, maybe the tank gauge was right about the water tank not being full. Oh, maybe I filled the holding tank with fresh water instead of the fresh water tank. NFD! (No F'n Duh)! What a fool. I filled the black water holding tank with fresh water. My gauges worked just great. In my last mad dash to get everything ready for surfing, I completely screwed myself. I ignored all the obvious signs. The tank gauges said something was wrong. Both vacuum pumps went out simultaneously which meant something else was probably wrong rather than the vacuum pumps themselves. I ignored all those obvious signs.
In a way, I felt better. Though I had been covered in crap twice, my tank gauges were now "fixed" (ok, sort of, 'cause in my mind they had been broken for a brief period). My vacuum pumps were no longer clogged and the toilets were flushing just fine. What a relief!
But ahead of me was still the unenviable task of cleaning the bilges. After all, the tens of gallons of smelly, grungy black water had drained into my hull. No big deal, I will just pump it out, rinse it with disinfectant and dry it out. In the end, my boat will be even cleaner and sweeter smelling. But to pump all that crap out, literally, I was going to have to think outside the box. I would routinely use a shop vac to suck up excess bilge water. However, this was not just bilge water, this was Jesse's morning coffee, Mike's Cobb Salad from yesterday, all processed into a milk chocolatey consistency.
No problem, I've got just the pump for that. I run and get it. But the discharge hose on it is too short to get from below deck to the starboard rail. Conveniently it has a garden hose fitting so I attach it to a spare garden hose. Problemo solved. I commence the pumping. The black water is disappearing before my very eyes. As I sit on the stairs to the pilot house, just as I'm pulling a muscle to pat myself on my back for a job well done, I feel this gush of wetness down the back of my pants, underneath my seat and down my legs. Holy buckets of doo doo Batman! The hose fitting isn't sealing. To the contrary, nothing is going out the hose to the rail. It's coming straight out of the fitting and down the stairs. I was concerned about a little dribble, so I'd smartly wrapped the fitting in a towel. I was not prepared for a high pressure torrent of sh*t!
Shower #3? Well, no, not just yet. I couldn't let the black water soak into my nice carpets. That's just not going to work for me. So now, moist from my waste to my knees with all my friends' excrement, I have to quickly sop up the spill, soak the carpets in fresh water, sop it up again and repeat ad nauseum until they're clean.
Shower #3!
Finally I'm prepared to finish the bilge cleaning job. I reluctantly resort to using my shop vac. After pumping several buckets of chocolate surprise the bilges are now dry. I douse with water and vacuum it up, wash with Lysol, vacuum it up, douse with water, vacuum it up, wash with Lysol, ad nauseum.
I clean all the carpets, put things back together, wash my tools (which have been covered in, well, you've got the picture by now) and proceed to take Shower #4.
In the end, My Lizzy was far cleaner and in much better repair after the first summer session of the year than before. Baxter's Break was on. But it was a humbling reminder that no matter how cool things can be, how good it feels to have enjoyed such a great day with friends surfing, you still may end up getting sh*t on.
Until the next time... Surf's up!
