New heads

The electric heads (marine toilets) in the boat had a serious (and disgusting) design flaw. Tony wrote them this email:

Dear Jabsco,

I have three 58500-0012 electric toilets (foot switch) installed in my boat.  Two of them have a tendency (not to put too fine a point on it) to splatter macerated shit up and out of the bowl.  This is an undesirable feature in a marine head.  As there are no obviously adjustable parts, I am at a loss.  What would you suggest?

and within an hour a service representative from Jabsco had called, offering to ship us redesigned replacement heads anywhere in the world. We had them shipped to Grenada, where they were held in bondage in customs for us.

Step 1. Liberate our heads from bondage.

We had an interesting time extricating the new ones from DHL (British colonial bureaucracy at its best, complete with carbon paper) : we visited six different offices (the DHL office twice), got multiple forms, and conflicting instructions from everyone we spoke with. The amount we were going to have to pay varied with each person we asked: from nothing, to daily storage fee for the days in customs, to 37% of the value of the heads.

We were eventually successful in liberating our two heads. We paid 2.5% of their value. We got our precious cargo into the rental car and then into a dock cart and then onto the boat. Yeah!

Step 2. Installation.

Tony did the first installation in the “big” bathroom — more room to work. It went okay; there was a hitch when the wire fell down the hole and it took a team of three to retrieve it. However, I now have a new head (that does not fling poo) and have been using it happily for three days now.

10 thoughts on “New heads

  1. My Grenadian colleague tells me that your bureaucracy issues are a very common problem there, she thinks you were lucky it didn’t take 2 days 🙂

  2. Look on the positive – all you have to do is jump over the side to clean off. Of course I would be puking as I did it.

  3. Glad to hear it all came out ok. At least you no longer have to give visitors a heads-up :). And now you can see how long you can keep “head” jokes going!

  4. My advice is never sail with people for whom you are not comfortable in handling their excretions.

    I have had more boats with leaks and problems than those without.

    Excellent engineering and looking forward to a full review of the performance
    !

  5. Is this why I will be attempting to deliver an electric pump next week? If yes, let’s just say that I am highly motivated to succeed!

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