An obstinate blockage
Reliability and redundancy were primary drivers when choosing our wonderful Garcia Exploration 45 Pearl of Penzance. We maintained this theme by specifying manual toilets, only to hit the buffers of Garcia’s experienced sales manager, Francois Treguay, now a good friend. With typical Gallic charm he said ‘Non, I reject your option’. ‘François, you don’t seem to understand; it’s my bloody boat and that’s what I want.’ ‘Non, I won’t let you do this. It’s for your own good. Our fleet of cruisers only have problems with manual toilets.’
‘OK, OK. I can’t quite believe we are saying this but to keep you happy we will have one manual and one electric toilet.’
‘Non, I like you too much, I have your best interests at heart.’ And so, thankfully, we ended up with two electric toilets that never let us down over two-and-a-half years of continual service.
As such, an electric toilet was a no-brainer for Oddity, particularly as they use much less water to flush, which is a significant gain when using the holding tank in canals and rivers. Chris Rees, a die-hard traditionalist boat builder, was mortified at the thought and so it was with apprehension and echoes of his mumblings of doom that I approached our new toilet, which was refusing to play.
It would pump out but not draw water to flush. I check the valve is open and then clean the pump filter which, due to our mooring being up the River Tamar, is pretty clogged. Easy, a quick clean and... it still won’t flush. Unlike Pearl’s robust impeller pump that seemed able to regurgitate all sorts of bits ‘n’ bobs, this one is complex. With loads of little moving parts, it looks to be in for a swap in the longer term.
I remove the pump head and service the whole thing. ‘Gotta be the answer,’ I call to Tracey as all sorts of little bits of seaweed get cleared from the four tiny valves. At least I am getting to know some of the nitty-gritty details of the boat. I’m now two hours in, but on reassembly it still won’t flush.
Back to basics, I take the pipes off the pump and blow towards the bowl. There’s no resistance so I blow down the inlet pipe to hear a satisfying rumble of bubbles up the hull. Time for a cuppa and a head scratch. The pump is serviced, the pipes are clear. The pump makes a noise when I run it so perhaps the drive shaft is slipping or broken.
I rig up a hose from a bucket of water to the suction side of the pump and it gushes all over my feet. Weird, I take it all apart and once again blow on the inlet pipe to hear that satisfying rumble up the hull. I reconnect it to the pump and still it doesn’t work.
It has to be a strange anomaly on the inlet side of things but I am stumped for an answer. Something to do with the seacock perhaps? I decide to methodically work from the pump outwards and shut off the seacock to completely remove the pipe. It’s only about 2ft long so I run a wire down from the pump side, which has a reducer, and out pops a strip of seaweed with one of those little balloons of air on its end.
Nature has created a non-return valve in that I can blow past it but as soon as I stop blowing, it floats back up to make a perfect seal on the reducer.
Another boating quirk – you just couldn’t make it up.
I run a wire down from the pump side, which has a reducer... out pops a strip of seaweed