Day 340, Year 6: The Stinky Head Story
Date: Thursday, September 29, 2011
Weather: Overcast, Heavy Rain in the Evening, Upper 60’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Before I get into the Stinky Head Story I want to continue with the electrical woes. We had to return the battery charger to Woods Hole Marine early this morning and move from the dock back to our mooring as the borrowed slip was rented starting at noon. We were just going to put the electrical issues out of mind for a while, but Dr. Dave is still on the case. He emailed a few times today with different suggestions and we do think he is getting to the core of the problem. But we have more testing to do and for most of it we need to be back on the dock. So we will put things on hold for the weekend and then hopefully get into a slip on Monday and get back to the electrical issues. Dave thinks we might have lost the diode rectifier bank in our charger/inverter, but he also thinks we have a problem somewhere in our circuit-a bad connection, a corroded of partially broken wire, some sort of problem causing high resistance. Mark has checked everything we can think of, but we need to delve deeper. Again, a huge thanks to you Dave for helping us with this problem.

Now . . . the Stinky Head Story. When we lived aboard Windbird in Boston for two years just prior to the Voyage of Windbird around the world, we had to use our holding tank. And we had a stinky head issue that was solved with new hoses, CP and KO (Clean Potty and Kills Odors), and a very expensive filter on the vent. It worked. Then we left on our round the world adventure and only needed to use a holding tank in New Zealand and Australia. In both places, there were on-shore facilities that we used most of the time, so once again we had no problems. We had no stinky head problem all around the world. Then we got home and we have had nothing but problems since. First we had a leak in the hose for pumping overboard. Mark replaced that, but then we started having really funky smells coming from the forward head. We agree with our friend Alan Kanegsberg that all of the sanitation hoses probably need to be changed every three or four years. So today Mark replaced all the hoses. We also agree with those people who think using fresh water for flushing will reduce odors coming from the holding tank. Mark re-plumbed and we tried this for the past couple of weeks. It did help, but we just can’t justify using that much fresh water, so we have switched back to salt water. It’s possible we will have to switch back to fresh, but we’ll try this for a bit. The last step is that we are going to install a new toilet. It is onboard, but it will probably be Monday before it gets installed as Mark works tomorrow and all weekend. Anyway, with a NEW toilet, NEW sanitation hose to the holding tank, and NEW sanitation hose to the pump-out, we are hoping our problem will be solved. The only thing not replaced will be the holding tank. If there are still odors, we will once again try KO and CP and the expensive filter for the vent. And if that doesn’t do it, then we will go back to fresh water. Most of you probably just go to the bathroom, flush, and forget about it. On a boat, it is a little more complicated since you are your own plumber and sanitation engineer. Poor Mark. He is exhausted from dealing with all these issues and removing old sanitation hose and installing new is one of the most exhausting jobs on a boat. That stuff is stiff and hard to handle. So it’s time to have him read this log so he can go to bed!

110929 Day 340 Cape Cod, USA–After Dinner Play