Marine heads, hanger storms, and other things about life on a boat

Aloha Westward Fans!

As of the writing of this blog, we have FINALLY stopped sailing on the wind and things have calmed down and dried out. (I know in the last blog I wrote that we had calmed a little, but then we had to head up, and had several more bumpy wet hours, so I guess I jinxed it for us.) Last night, we saw big winds and big speeds. We had a little bit of everything: rain squalls, periods of no wind, bright starry skies, total darkness. Today, we're seeing a little bit of everything, weather-wise, and pretty decent speeds. Life is good.

But, enough about the racing part of this trip. Let's talk for a little while about life on a boat. This boat, in fact.

For the last five days, we had been living life at somewhere near a 45 degree angle, which makes everything...more interesting.

For instance, answering the call of nature. We're working hard, which means we're drinking lots of water, which means there must be somewhere for all that liquid to end up. That's where the marine head comes in (for you non-sailors out there, heads are a favorite topic of discussion among distance sailors). On Westward, we've got a pretty complicated process for using the head, thanks mostly to the fact that the water level higher than the plumbing of head, so we're having a bit of an overflow issue. Here's what we've got worked out:

1. Take off all your foul weather gear.
2. Open the floorboard and open the water inlet valve. (Most marine heads have a manual pump and you pump water in, do your business, and flush by pumping the waste out and clean water in, and then pump to empty.)
3. Open the outlet valve (the valve that connects the discharge pipe to the ocean. This is where a lot of water has actually been coming in.
4. Pump the head dry.
5. Close the outlet valve again.
6. Do your business.
7. Open the outlet valve.
8. Flush the head (by some pumping and some letting clean water in) as normal, but make sure to pump fast enough that the bowl doesn't overflow onto the floor.
9. Pump the head dry.
10. Close the outlet valve.
11. Close the inlet valve.
12. Replace the floorboards.
13. Wash your hands (although, in all frankness, I'm guessing this step gets skipped sometimes).
14. Put on your foul weather gear again and head up to do some sailing. Or, don't put your foul weather gear back on and get into your (most likely wet) bunk. (Note: the further south we get, the less and less we'll have to do this -- we are heading toward the latitude we don't need foul weather gear!)

Another fun thing about life at an angle: The hanger storm. We have our foul weather gear and life jackets hanging on a line that runs down the main cabin. When the boat gets rolling, the hangers do to and every once in a while Willie, who is sleeping on the downhill bunk, is the victim of a hanger storm. He's generally a pretty good sport about it.

Spirits are high on board. Today we're pretty sure we revealed Sam's secret stage name: Candy Man. Watch out, ladies, he's soon coming to a port near you.

After a long but fulfilling day, the WAM watch is off to bed. Sam, Graham, and Zack are on deck. Hopefully they'll make some good progress to Honolulu in these next four hours!

-Westward and her crew





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