“Macerator – Macerator”

18th-20th Jul 2010

Perhaps an odd subject but none the less the focus of our protracted stay at Airlie beach is that of the macerator. But, before I explain the why and the what, you must first ‘sing the above title, to the tune of “mashed potato” as in:

“Macerator - Macerator –Di, Dar, Di, Da!”

Why; because for some reason every time this topic gets mentioned ‘all and sundry’ seem to erupt into this tune and given the unsavoury nature of the subject I guess one can understand why.

Now this macerator is a pump on the boat’s toilet system (called the head in marine terminology) which has the dual roll of pumping out the toilet waste and mashing it all in to fine particles before dumping it in the Ocean. The lesser system, as currently fitted to Pilgrim, is a manual pump that is quite adequate for the first role but ineffective at the latter. For this reason Queensland Marine Environmental laws require all boat to have Macerators and apply hefty fines to those that don’t. Now you see why we have been stuck in Airlie.

In fact, I ordered the required parts last week by phone but of course, details in despatch etc mean they are yet to arrive some 4 days after tying up here. All is not lost however, as I needed to do the trip planning up to Cape York and had a number of jobs I needed to get done on the boat.

One such task was securing the attach point of the main sheet to the boom - basically the ‘rope’ ( a term rarely used on a boat) on which the mainsail swings. Anyway, contrary to my many efforts, a large and important nut had been slackening off from time to time thus threatening a situation where the boom might swing wildly to its extreme and this would cause untold trauma. Early in our stay, as luck would have it, I noted that the boat ‘next door’ was having some stainless work done so for a token amount, the guys came over and welded the offending item in place. Problem solved! This along with fuel issues, sail repairs and some painting are likely to keep us gainfully employed although I do admit that I am keen to push on, particularly after a conversation with a local who was explaining that some of the best cruising in Australia was north of here. We’ll see.