Saturday nights

Originally posted March 9th 2008.

My Saturday Nights are usually filled with more excitement then tonight but as I slept all day I had a task to complete. To install my new marine Head into the Sea Weasel. The old head leaked water when in use and it and the backwater line reeked of sewage. The new head was a Jabsco Marine Manual Head that I bought on Craiglist for $60 brand new.I had planed to install it while Cheryl slept Saturday. I woke up in the morning; had breakfast with Cheryl and fell asleep until 2pm. I basically had the evening left when Cheryl went to work. I drove out to the boat and fired up the radio to the Canucks game and prepped to put in the new head. I first closed all the seacocks and disconnected the hoses to the old head. I thought for sure that I would leak shitty water all over the place but would you believe that I did not spill a drop. I removed the old head with some difficulty and used the new head as a template to drill new holes for the base. I filled in the old holes with 5200 and the new holes as well. I screwed up by buying 3" boles instead of 4" bolts so I was unable to properly mount the head until Monday. The raw water rinsing line was straightforward. I simply cut off a fresh end and mounted it to the new head which matched the new one perfectly. The black water line could not be reused as it smelt of filth. It reeked so bad that it made sleeping in the V berth less than ideal. The black water line was fairly easy to remove; replacing it however was a chore. The new line fit on the head perfectly and there was no issue. When I went to connect it to the through hull fitting I hit a problem; the through hull was significantly thicker than the hose. I tried to sand down the fitting but it was tough to reach it properly. I took a section of crap hose and tried tapering the hose end so that it would slide more easily over the end. This assisted in getting it on the end but it was not enough. I thought that one way to deal with this was to heat the hose to soften it. I had a heat gun and when I fired that up I was able to fit the hose on like it was butter. The whole thing worked beautifully and I chucked the old head and hose into the dumpster and was home by 11pm. While not a glamorous Saturday night it was nice to have improved the Weasel significantly. Now he head and V-Berth were fresh and the ladies had a more appealing restroom. In all it was a fairly straightforward procedure just requiring troubleshooting skills.