Who’s Minding the Boat? Of Pump Outs, Bilges and Electrical Hook Ups

Our daughter, Allyson, tells me that our new life is confusing to people. When we say we are living aboard a boat, they envision the ship-shape tidy but cramped quarters of a 30 or 40 foot sailboat, where most everything is below water level, you sleep in narrow bunks, the galley is not exactly a fully functioning kitchen, the head is a marine contraption of some sort and potable water comes in bottles only. But then we say, “no, no ~ it has 2500 square feet of indoor living area ~ enough for all of our Seattle furniture ~ an additional bunch of outdoor deck area that is larger than some yards, all new appliances, a 55 inch TV, two flush toilets, two full baths and city water.” So they envision either a luxurious yacht on the order of one that Aristotle Onassis would own, or a floating house like the one situated on Lake Union in “Sleepless in Seattle.”  (For my younger readers, Onassis, a billionaire Greek ship magnate, was Jackie Kennedy’s aka Jackie O’s second husband.)

But, then, the reality of it all hits our visitors instantly as they board/enter our beloved home via a gangplank and are immediately confronted with three large fuel tanks on the stern (our point of entry). Not a cramped 35 foot sailboat, nor a luxurious yacht, nor a floating house. It is uniquely what it is ~ a 60 year old retired Mississippi push tug that has lots of cozy living space but still bears, and always will bear, many of the hallmarks of an industrial ship. Actually, glamour yachts and cruise ships have all of our industrial components but mostly no one but the crew or owners see them.

During a recent visit from a friend from Seattle  we had two power outages, multiple bilge pump outs each day, as well as the usual daily holding tank pump outs, causing him to shake his head in concern and wonder out loud how on earth we could ever take a vacation ~ who would mind the ship??

Good question. Though, quite honestly, we feel like we’re on permanent vacation. We love, love, love being on the water and the balmy Florida climate. It’s also a kick seeing a sign that says “Miami, 140 miles” when we’re out running errands. The “season” has ended in Fort Myers, meaning all the snow birds have gone back North, and the bustling downtown area near the marina is eerily quiet. Our seasons are the opposite of the New England shore which is just now revving up for the summer season and will go quiet in late October or early November, just as we are gearing up for the new winter season. Weird.

So who is minding the boat? Well ~ let’s start with Allie’s picture essay of a “typical” pump out.

After dinner tonight, I was given a job…”babysit” the holding tank pump out! EEEEWWWW!

Whoosh! Suddenly the flow of the pump out increases! (I can feel it under my hand.)

18 million hours later, the pump out is still going…slowly…

Oh. Um, guess it’s better to feel the flow from under the hose coupling instead of over. Oops.

I take over for Allie and opt to read rather than take pictures.

The truth is that I have gotten to the point where I look forward to pump outs because it give s me the opportunity to sit quietly on the bow, enjoying the river breezes, one hand on the hose and one hand on my Kindle ~ currently reading the Ken Follett trilogy about politics and social change spanning the 20^th century ~ fascinating mix of history lessons, romance, and getting inside the heads of people with strongly held political convictions ranging the full spectrum from Facism and Nazism to socialism to anarchism to Communism.

So much for pump outs ~ pretty routine by now. No more burning out the marina’s pump motor. Yay!

On to the bilge. Ah, the bilge. I learn more about the bilge every day, it seems. Apparently, we have incoming river water basically running the length of our 85 foot hull (this, I am assured, is normal). Some of this water gets pumped out on a fairly regular basis. But, I have learned, gallons and gallons may have been sitting under the floor of the crews’ quarters* for years ~ literally ~ and is smelling rather… er…shall we say “ripe”? When we first moved aboard I assumed the occasional whiffs of somewhat sewage-y and metallic odors that wafted up from down below were somehow connected to the holding tank in the water room and/or the diesel engines in the engine room.

No, not really. I discovered, to my amazement and joy, at least a couple of months ago that the diesel engines actually smell kind of okay ~ just a somewhat sweet diesel kind of odor, not at all unpleasant, at least not to me.

More recently we finally had our new central air conditioning installed (just in time, as it turns out ~ temperatures have been running in the upper 80s/lower 90s for over a week now). There had been a central air condenser and air handler installed decades ago which were in dire need of replacing, so, thankfully, at least we had air ducts and vents ready to go for the new units. The new air handler was installed exactly where the old one had been (makes sense). What didn’t make so much sense was that the old air handler had been installed directly over some of the bilge in a small closet in the crews’ quarters. Net result … sigh … when the blissfully cool air was being efficiently and effectively blown throughout the main deck, it was accompanied by a not so blissful faint hint of sewage smell.

Crews’ quarters, currently being used as a storage area/basement.

New energy efficient air handler is much smaller than the old one which rested directly on the floor and next to the bilge water.

It is possible, of course, to install citrus-y air fresheners next to each vent, thus masking the stench ~ which we have done. But, we need to eliminate the source of said stench. I had already checked the water room, from which we assumed the sewage smell was coming ~ but, no, it smelled clean and fresh. So..

Rick intrepidly lifted a couple of floor boards near the air handler in the crews’ quarters* and found, well, perhaps you don’t really need to know what we found. Suffice it to say that Rick came up with a solution of running a long hose from the bilge under the air handler to the holding tank (by the way, “holding tank” is a polite way of saying the large tank into which our toilets flush before we pump it out to the marina tank and on to the City of Fort Myers sewage system). From the holding tank, the bilge water is pumped out with the rest of the sewage. Quite honestly, we are surmising that previous occupants somehow allowed some of their sewage to get into the bilge, which mostly should be relatively clean water from the outside, and just let it sit… and sit… and sit… At the very least, we are experiencing the lovely scent of anaerobic bacteria in action. Anyway ~ this is in process ~ we figure it will be about a week before the entire bilge is pumped out and then we will keep a vigilant eye on it. The ship, by the way, already smells ever so much better!

The only bilge area of which I was previously aware was a small area in the shaft room (somehow appropriately named, I think). The shaft room is behind the engine room and houses the two large steering shafts that guide the ship when we’re under way.  This tiny little pool of water inexplicably fills up to a certain level (not very significant) and then needs to be turned on to bring it back down to closer to empty. Normally, bilge pumps operate automatically and we often see all the boats around us happily gurgling bilge water out for hours at a time. At the moment, ours does not do this automatically. For a while we needed to go down once or twice a day to plug the pump in. The pump was very quick and effective, though, like most everything on the boat, it was very old and had one little quirk ~ once the water got down to a certain level, it started spouting water back into the bilge, rather than sucking it out.

So we replaced the old pump with a less powerful but non-spouting pump rigged up with a float that is supposed to automatically kick in when the water gets to a certain level. There have been a couple of odd things about said float. At first, it was kicking in when the bilge water level was low or empty and stopping when it was full. Still figuring that one out. But Rick managed to rearrange it so the float alerts the pump to begin when the water level, or rather the float itself, is high. However ~ the water never really gets high enough to make the float do its thing, so once or twice a day we still need to check the bilge and use a long handled tong thingy/picker upper to lift the float several inches above the water, thus starting the pump.

Long handled tongs grasping the bilge float.

As for the electrical ~ We now have two 50 amp connections for the entire ship, one for the central air conditioning and one for everything else. Most of the time this system works well, but on occasion, we trip a circuit breaker (stove, oven, large exhaust fan and window air conditioning units where the central air doesn’t reach). We pretty much have this one figured out too ~ we have bright flashlights in strategic locations throughout the ship so they can be snatched up in the pitch dark without needing to even think about it. I’m really good at getting the circuit back on ~ it’s located in a box on the shore. Except… we have discovered that sometimes we get just a bit of power back that allows for flickering, dim lights but not much else. A classic 1960’s style NYC “brown out” that used to be enforced by Con Ed during extra high usage times (every air conditioner in the city). Rick tells me that is NOT supposed to happen ~ either the circuit is on or it isn’t. Hmmmm..

So, anyway, we arranged with the marina to hook up the second 50 amp cord on a box across the dock from us. All copacetic, until today, a day when Rick happens to be out of town on a consulting assignment, when I got stopped by the dock master, who said “I thought this hook up was for one day. If it’s permanent, you need to plug in to a different 50 amp plug.” (60 feet down the dock) Allie and I are still wondering why (not really…) he didn’t mention this to Rick one of the billion times they chatted during the past week when the hook up was in place. But that’s a whole other discussion topic, so we’ll let it go… It turns out that we are hooked into a “transient” (overnight) shore connection that gets billed at a significantly higher rate than the “live aboard” rate and, besides that, it’s for transients. The marina’s solution? Purchase a 60 foot 50 amp (they are rather large) extension cord to plug into the connection 50 feet down the dock or turn the boat around so the bow is closer to the box we need to use. Oh my. Still under consideration.

I guess our life is a bit confusing! Never dull, that’s for sure! And, the answer is that we are all minding the boat. And it’s really fun!

*A bit of history, courtesy of Allyson: Another term for “crews’ quarters” is “fo’c’s’le”, short for “fore castle”, the placement up front where crew used to be posted to defend ships. Literally a castle in the front.