You down with OPP?

Yeah, you know me.  (Google it, mom.  I will not be responsible for explaining OPP to my mother.)

In this case, the other P stands for Poop.  Yep.  It's a poop blog post today.



You know that smell we've been battling?  Well, I think we've almost solved the problem.  And it was not so simple as just rinsing out the holding tanks.  Oh, no.  It was an ordeal.

Mark took down the bit of wall that covers the holding tank in the forward head.  He examined all the hoses.  We both sniffed.  And sniffed, and sniffed.  We can't find a source around the holding tank.  But we cleaned the area with Spray 9 and followed the hoses to check for other sources.

We checked the vent hose.  It's clear and clean.  Even though it is a notorious source of boat odors, it doesn't seem to be our problem.

Mark took down the medicine cabinets that are on each side of the head.  Woah, nelly.  This led us to the space between the outer hull of the boat and the inner shower/head liner.  Ding, ding, ding!  We have a winner!  We stuck our heads in there (one at a time, the head is not really big enough for 2 people...) and shined our lights on what looks to be a really old poop explosion.  Yum.  I got to town (gloves up to my elbows, by the way) on spraying down the entire area - every single thing that I could douse with Spray 9 was doused.  And then doused again.  And then we let it sit for 3-5 minutes, per the instructions.  And then we rinsed.

Now keep in mind, when we rinsed this area between the interior liner and the hull, the dirty rinse water, now filled with some unknown person's/persons' poo, the water had to go somewhere.  And that was thru the boat into the bilge under the dining table.  Yeah.  A big ole poo trail all through the interior of the boat.  To the spot where we cook/eat/watch tv, etc.  So we kept rinsing and rinsing and rinsing - running the bilge pump the whole time to get everything OUT of the boat.

Let's just say that we didn't rinse thoroughly enough the first time - as we left the boat and came back to the smell wafting from a new location.  While the head smelled relatively fresh, the forward cabin, just aft of the head (aka downstream) was not so rosey.  So we rinsed and sprayed and rinsed again.

We headed back to the boat a couple times this week after school/work and found the boat to be remarkably non-smelly.  For the first time ever - in the entire year we've owned her.  Now to be honest, we do think we need to check the joker valve in the forward head, as we are now able to tell that there's a wee bit of odor emanating from that location.  And as Mark was so kind to point out, that area tends to get clogged - often with a tiny speck of toilet paper, but more likely my hair.  So I'll be taking that little guy apart, cleaning him and putting him back together.  I'll soon know the entire workings of both heads and that makes me happy.  Really, it does.  And hopefully it will knock out the very last trace of any "boat smells."