Not sure if you call this a shit show, a cluster fuck or maybe a cluster fuck of shit shows.
I will start by saying we have three “heads” (boat speak for toilets) on board. At this moment, none of them are working.
For background, one toilet is a hand-pump, salt-water flush with its own holding tank which evacuates with gravity. The other two are fresh-water, vacuum-flush toilets. Each has a pump to transfer from the toilet to a holding tank and there is a third discharge pump for evacuating the holding tank.
The salt-water flush is very common on boats. But, wouldn’t you know, DFN has a less-common brand of toilet. Lucky for us, we have spare parts for that on board. Roger and Doug spent a day reconditioning that toilet with the parts we have. Unfortunately, that did not solve the problem. So, the manual toilet is not working and we can’t get parts to fix it. Looks like we may swap it out for the, more-common, Jabsco version which is on order and will arrive in a few days (like when we really don’t need it anymore).
I love our vacuflush toilets and, for the most part, they work very well. They can be a little finicky; but, they are relatively easy to repair and we carry lots of spare parts for the most common types of repairs. The pump for the forward head was running more than expected and was not holding the pressure as it should. Roger and Doug spent a day servicing that pump with the spare parts we have on hand. That did not solve the problem. Only thing we can figure is that we need a whole new pump.
While trying to solve the problem with the forward head, we determined that the discharge pump was not working (and hasn’t been for some days). A full holding tank means we can’t use any of the vacuflush toilets. Honestly! Good news, we have, not one but two, spare discharge pumps onboard. After a few hours Roger and Doug managed to get the new one installed and we are back in business with at least one toilet for now.
We love having Doug onboard. He is such a good sport, easy-going and handy. In this case, he replaced me as plumbing assistant; so, I am especially grateful. If he reports that he had a shitty trip this time, you will know what he is talking about. Although, in fairness, it wasn’t all work and no play. We did explore some new islands and showed him some of our favourites from previous trips.
