Sounds great, but how much poop does she hold?

For the most part, people ask us the same questions. How big is this boat? How long will you be gone? Where do you plan to go? (Bafflingly) are you taking the kids? A couple of weeks ago, though, we had a practically-minded contractor friend ask us what, exactly, we did with all of the poop. Let me explain.

When Milou was built, Ze French were not concerned about protecting delicate bays and estuaries from human waste. The content of both heads (toilets, to you lubbers) were pumped directly overboard. Simple, effective, and now illegal in many, many places.

The retro-fit in place when we purchased Milou involved a soft bladder-style tank under the v-berth. As we’ve mentioned before, winterizing work on our boat that first year was…inadequate. Despite of the hefty fee we were charged, the decommissioning yard in Texas failed to do a number of things to protect the systems on our boat, and one of them was a failure to empty out the poo.

It turns out that when you park raw sewage in a plastic tube in Wisconsin over the winter said tube will crack and leak.

I should mention that our boat used to smell pretty bad. The previous owners had opted to just let a huge diesel leak continue unchecked (different story), which gave Milou a sour diesel smell. A little diesel odor is not so terrible–it’s a smell I associate with boats–but our diesel smell was a little over the top. When the bag of sh-t under the V-berth (our bed) began to thaw, it added this lovely smell to the mix. The bag had to go. It took up all of the prime storage under the V berth, and even when it was all the way full it only took up about a quarter of the volume of the storage area in which it sat. There had to be a more efficient way to store poop.

But first Michu had to remove the poop bag. It had about 25 gallons of waste in it–200 pounds, more or less. The fill, drain and vent hoses were all very stuck in place, so Michu made 6 wooden plugs, cut the hoses with a hack saw and quickly sealed them with the plugs. Then he realized that the thing was to heavy for him to lift. He filled a 5-gallon bucket and made three trips to the marina bathroom in order to dump them. Luckily, it was very early spring/late winter and nobody was there to smell him doing it. He was then able to wrestle the wiggly bag of gross out of the boat.

We replaced it with this:

A rigid polyethylene tank, 25 gallons, and all new hoses. It is mounted in the space where the air conditioner (also frozen and busted, after we paid to have it winterized) used to sit; getting rid of the AC gave us some closet space and made room for the new poop tank.

The poo still needs to be pumped out when the tank fills; it can also be discharged overboard if we are three miles or more offshore and not in the Great Lakes. Our fancy tank monitoring system consists of opening a closet door and looking at the side of the translucent tank to see how much more room we have to go. Last summer, we filled it 3/4 full over six days; we will probably need to empty it about every seven days.

Our aft head, sandwiched between the kids’ berths, still pumps directly overboard. It’s disconnected while we’re cruising the Great Lakes and coastal U.S, as it’s 100% illegal, but can be hooked up when we’re in remote locations. It also acts as a spare-parts holding area for the forward head.

Living on a sailboat is not for the squeamish. Dealing with waste is probably the most direct way to confront that reality; but hopefully our upgrades will make for a robust and contained system.