HEAD GAMES
SYSTEMS
t has been our pattern ever since we began cruising on Ganymede, a home-finished Cape George 31 cutter, to take the already simple systems we began with and simplify them further. And so, the motorcycle battery first used to start the outboard got chucked in favor of pulling the cord; the fuel now lives in a 5-gallon Mexican fabric-softener jug with a hole cut in it for a hose (it actually leaks and smells less than the OEM tank); the hand pump for lamp oil is in a junk heap in a Colombian boatyard. The list goes on: Suffice it to say that nearly everything is simpler and has fewer moving parts than when we began. Only one boat system, in fact, has become more complicated, and that was by necessity.
For the first several years of our cruise, when we were exploring Central and South America, in some of the places we explored, our sanitation strategy—the tried-and-true rubber bucket—was positively space-age. And in locales with more-modern conveniences, the strict injunction to use designated pump-out stations was made ironic by the complete absence of such facilities. I look forward to the day when every harbor has a pump-out facility, and coastal cities no longer dump sewage straight into the water. But these are the times we live in, and that was the situation in the spots where we cruised.
Returning to the United States, however, presented a new challenge. Here there are designated pump-out facilities, and the dutiful sailor will want to avail himself of them, for the good of everyone. And so,
IFor a long time while exploring abroad, when it came to ablutions, the “bucket and chuck it” strategy worked fine…but once back stateside, it was time to tackle the toilet. seeing we were going to cruise in home waters for some time, I installed a holding tank and a porcelain toilet. There being nowhere else to put it, the holding tank went in the tiny head cubicle, in the place where we used to hang foul-weather gear and stash the laundry basket. The biggest advantage of having it there is that there’s a very short run of hose from the head to the tank—the plumbing doesn’t pass under people’s bunks or through any bulkheads and is 100 percent accessible. Another advantage is that the 20-gallon tank takes up so much room that on really rough nights, there’s no chance of falling off the toilet because you’re wedged in pretty tight. It might not be comfortable, but who goes to sea for that anyway?
I have always wanted a Wilcox-crittenden “Skipper” head, the one with a castbronze body and oh-so-elegant pump handle. Sadly, they’re no longer made, and if they were, there simply wouldn’t have been room on our boat. My
No. 2 choice was the Lavac, largely because it seems the simplest, most trouble-free marine head out there. Also, being able to mount the pump separately from the toilet was necessary due to the space restrictions I’ve already mentioned. I mounted the pump on the bulkhead above, which was perfect for the children, who could stand on the closed lid of the head and pull on the handle to their hearts’ content.
Now, however much space a 20-gallon holding tank uses up, it’s not really all that big when five people are contributing, and we had to find a pump-out station pretty frequently. Also, since the system was closed—there were as yet no through-hulls at all in Ganymede—the only way we could self-empty the holding tank was to adapt a spare hand pump to the deck fitting, drop a hose over the side, and pump overboard that way. Definitely not for the faint of heart, and too acrobatic to do out at sea in any kind of weather. Clearly more plumbing was needed.
I had avoided putting any through-hulls at all in Ganymede when I built her, for the simple reason that I dislike and distrust them. However well-made and well-installed, there’s no denying that they make for a weak link below the waterline, and hose connections with clamps are a common point of failure and raise the potential for sinking. But there was no denying that some sort of outlet would be needed if we wanted to cruise offshore or in foreign lands again, and a water inlet would be nice as well: So far we had been pouring water into the bowl in order to flush.
Still, I couldn’t bring myself to use regular bronze through-hulls and seacocks. I mean, a sailor has to sleep at night! Instead, I ordered some lengths of thickwalled fiberglass pipe from Mcmaster-carr. Then with the