December 23, 2007. Holy crap, what a day. Literally.

Let me start off with a little marine plumbing lesson. We have 2 heads on our boat. On our forward head there’s a 45 gallon holding tank. That’s all fine and dandy and not very interesting but on our aft head there’s a miracle in a box called a Lectra-san.

When you flush the aft head the “flushins” are sent into the first chamber of the two sided Lectra-san. Once there, the flushins are ground up by a macerator and subjected to an intense electrical shock. The electricity combined with the salt in the water joins forces to create an acid that effectively destroys all bacteria in the flushins.

The next time the head is flushed the now semi sterile flushins in the first chamber are sent to the second chamber of the unit while the next batch of “fresh” flushins moves into the first chamber. Once in the second chamber the once treated flushins are ground again by a second macerator and shocked a second time.

Now these flushins are sterile and supposedly contain less bacteria than the water the boat is floating in. The only difference between this scenario and what actually was happening was that after flushing the head the only thing sterile on the boat was me.

All the tests we ran and troubleshooting that we did indicated that the electrode in the unit was dead. We were able to order a new electrode and all that was left to do was install it. F*#k me.

When we found the unit to be inoperative we stopped using it but had continued to pump water through it in an effort to purge as much of the scankativity out of the chambers. I knew one of us was going to have to disassemble the unit to remove and replace the electrode. As Christy motored away in the dinghy I decided that it was probably going to be me.



The unit is located under the vanity inside a tiny door. By removing a small plug on the top of the unit you expose the flushins in various stages of decomposition. I went deep into the tool bag to find my turkey baster. Seriously. It took close to an hour to suck the couple of gallons of flushins out of the unit so I could start the disassembly. I would have been done sooner had I not kept passing out from the smell.

You gotta remember that I was crouching, kneeling and sitting cross legged in the tiny aft head. I was running the inverter so I could have our one big ass fan blowing into the room on me. The smell was so bad that Christy really did leave and the dogs were sitting on deck, howling. They probably thought that I was decomposing.

The entire top of the unit had to come off. It’s a big rectangular box and the lid is held in place by eighteen bolts. Really, 18. Oh look, there freaking metric too. F*#k me. Five of the bolts are easily accessible, eight are tough to get too and the last five just plain suck. After another hour I get the unit apart and instantly began to wish that I had failed. The unit’s been in the boat for 7 years and has never been opened before. Pandora’s Box had nothing on the nightmares lurking inside this box. I've smelled things that man was never supposed to.

The exchange of new and old parts is straight forward and goes well. Upon reassembly I find a badly corroded electrical connection. This connection was probably the problem all along and going inside the Lectra-san’s tank to replace the electrode was probably unnecessary. As a result, the only thing I can do is take my large, shit covered screwdriver and plunge it into my temple. Alright, no I didn’t, but the impulse was there. I couldn’t believe that I’d just spent the better part of an afternoon covered in the fecal memories of anyone who’s ever taken a dump on our boat, for pretty much nothing.

Once I stopped crying I repaired the connection and then washed the handful of tools I’d used in alcohol (Bourbon) before washing them in bleach. By then it was dinner time and Christy was back. She was happy the Lectra-san worked properly again. After I showered we went with some friends to a nearby pub. She recounted her afternoon to me, while I drank to forget mine.

On the bright side………never mind, I’ve got nothing. Shit, I can’t believe it. Well, at least the electrode has been replaced and should last for years to come. Or we could just sell the boat, the next time it needs to be replaced. See, the glass is still half full even if it’s a fecal frappe`.

Some new entries for word of the day…….

Macerator……It’s a marine plumbing device that grinds fecal matter into smaller fecal matter. Think poopy blender.

Flushins…………if you read the story then you can pretty much grasp where I’m going with that. Almost sounds like a side order at McDonalds. Yeah, um, I'd like a Big Mac and a side order of McFlushins............