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Head Odors

One of the chief causes of head odor is poor maintenance or design of the onboard sanitation system.The hose and hose connections are often, but not always, the culpable components.

Good hose is useless if the unions are not well clamped. Barbed hose end fittings should be snug and securely sealed and, of course, free of leaks.

All hoses fail. You can prolong the life of your hose and prevent odors by ensuring there are no loops that can trap sewage.The easiest way to identify a failed hose, is to rub a clean cloth along it and sniff it every foot.

Rigid PVC tubing will also contain odors as well, but it is only suitable for long, straight hose runs between the head and the holding tank.If there are many bends and unions, they will only introduce more potential for leaks.

Some head odors come from rotting organic matter, such as seaweed and krill in the intake line or holding tank.Boats that have ready access to a dock or adequate freshwater capacity (either in tankage or watermaker) may want to consider upgrading to a freshwater-flush system.

Saltwater heads will benefit from a freshwater flush as well.Some head odor problems can be resolved simply by a routine flush-closing the intake seacock and flushing freshwater through the head.

For advice on choosing installing the best sanitation system for your boat, purchase and download Marine Sanitation Systems, Volume 1 - Marine Toilets today!

Vacuum-Flush Toilets

Switching to a vacuum flush system requires some changes in habit. With some systems, it is important to turn off the power to the system at a proper switch or breaker whenever leaving the boat for long periods. If any of the seals in the toilet or hoses should begin to leak, the vacuum pressure would drop and the vacuum generator would turn on automatically, gradually running down the ships batteries.

Users also will have to be more vigilant about what goes into the toilet. Reduced water usage means that the bowl is not rinsed as well. Some owners provide a separate small garbage bin for users to deposit toilet paper in.

Holding the vacuum pressure is critical. Any leak around any hose fitting would compromise the performance of the system. The installation guides suggest having a digital vacuum gauge (available from Sealand) to assure level integrity, and this would be a good addition on any boat planning a cruise of a year or more.

Although the vacuum-pressure reduces water usage, some of the best electric-flush toilets in our tests were also quite miserly with water, and more forgiving with solids. If you host many guests who are unschooled in the ways of the marine toilet, you should also look at other models that have vortex-type water pumps to break and wash out solid waste.

For advice on choosing installing the best marine toilet for your boat, purchase and download Marine Sanitation Systems, Volume 1 - Marine Toilets today!

Composting Marine Heads

Composting heads offer several big advantages for sailors: They require no through-hull fittings, no plumbing, and no separate holding tank.They have few moving parts. The solids are reduced fairly quickly, and take up less space than the mixed sewage, urine, and flush-water of a holding tank.On the negative side, the toilets themselves take up more space in the head compartment, they require a through - deck fitting and vent, and they need a constant supply of electricity (in very small to moderate amounts) to perform their best.

Composting heads are essentially Type III marine sanitation devices (MSDs), but with an important difference.Rather than simply storing sewage, composters separate the solid waste from the liquid portion, and convert the solid portion - the one that presents environmental problems - into an easy-to-handle, safe, non-odorous humus.The liquid waste is either stored or evaporated.

When the composting action is complete, whats left is black odor-free powder thats free of dangerous bacterial contamination. Its safe and not unpleasant to handle, and can be stored in the MSD itself, or in plastic bags or any container.The humus, however, cannot legally be dumped overboard within US territorial waters - it must be brought ashore and disposed of on land. It makes a fine fertilizer for your flowerbeds, but maybe not for your vegetable garden.

Urine, which presents much less of an environmental and health hazard than does solid waste, is a major problem with composting toilets. It can't be composted, and the boater using a composting MSD has only two choices: store it, or evaporate it.Stored urine, while not particularly hazardous, develops a strong ammonia stink.Storage within the MSD itself is limited, so stowing it until landfall usually means transferring it to sealed plastic jugs, which add to the space requirements of a larger- than-usual head.

For advice on choosing and installing the best marine toilet for your boat, purchase and download Marine Sanitation Systems, Volume 1 - Marine Toilets today!

Onboard Medical Kits

Crew on boats venturing farther from shore or sailing in more remote areas have a greater risk of injury and illness.

Waters farther from shore will be more open, and exposed to waves with a longer fetch and winds at higher speeds. More time spent on deck is apt to increase the incidence of dehydration, headaches, nausea, and sunburn. More traumatic injuries such as cuts, sprains, and severe injuries will occur because the boats are apt to be in less stable sea conditions. Seasickness will also be a more significant problem.

A coastal cruiser medical kit will be called upon to sustain crewmembers with a wider variety of ailments for a longer time than those kits used by a daysailer. So not only do these kits require items not found in daysailer kits, they need more of the core items like bandages and basic medications. A hypothermic thermometer (with a range for measuring low body temperature), and a space blanket are among those items not in daysailer kits but should be in the coastal cruiser kit. Several medications should be included to combat seasickness, sunburn, nausea, pain, hypoglycemia, hypothermia, and other conditions that can arise at sea.

For more information on how to select onboard medical kits, purchase and download Survival at Sea, Volume 3: Onboard First Aid today!

To read more about how to best prepare for an emergency on the water, purchase the entire Survival at Sea ebook series from Practical Sailor. Four volumes in all - Life Rafts, Ditch Bags, Onboard Medical Kits, and Survival Electronics. Buy all four for the price of three!

You'll get one complete ebook FREE.

Onboard Medical Kits

For ocean voyages, consider the following - Even with modern technology, ships can only steam so fast, and the maximum range for most helicopters is roughly 300 miles. If you contact a shoreside base and request an evacuation because a crew member has broken his or her femur, for example, an interagency and international search will begin to locate any vessel within your vicinity. If there is one close by, thats wonderful, but if not, the victim will have to be sustained and monitored using only the knowledge and equipment on board, coupled with any advice that can be obtained by VHF radio, SSB, or Satcom.

With off shore medical kits, its critical that before departure for an offshore passage, the skipper conduct a thorough orientation with his crew. Everyone on board needs not only to know where the kit is stowed, but should be capable of hauling it out and demonstrating its contents, including any reference books and manuals, and emergency contact numbers.

Its imperative that each crew bring any personal medications that he or she takes on a continuing basis or medications taken in special circumstances. No crewmember should trust that the onboard medical kit will have their specific prescriptions. Personal medications will include things like injectable adrenalin for allergic episodes, asthma inhalers, cardiac medications like nitrogen tablets, antidepressants taken regularly, birth-control pills, insulin, and antibiotics.

In addition, crewmembers should take along signed prescription orders for medication refills in excess of the projected quantities, just in case. As always, a skipper should ask each crew about his or her personal medications and enter the dosage schedules in the log, along with what clinical signs to expect if the person misses any doses.

For more information on how to select onboard medical kits, purchase and download Survival at Sea, Volume 3: Onboard First Aid today!

To read more about how to best prepare for an emergency on the water, purchase the entire Survival at Sea ebook series from Practical Sailor. Four volumes in all - Life Rafts, Ditch Bags, Onboard Medical Kits, and Survival Electronics. Buy all four for the price of three!

You'll get one complete ebook FREE.

Monitoring Battery Voltage

If you are among the many sailors who will be headed south for the first time this season you may suddenly find that routines and systems that worked fine for short summer cruises may need some modification for extended voyages. Energy management is probably one the most difficult challenges that new long-term cruisers face, and to manage energy properly we need to accurately monitor battery state. Whether you use a sophisticated battery monitor or a simple hydrometer to check the state of your battery, knowing how and when to check your batteries voltage is important.

Battery voltage is about the closest you will come to having equivalent of a gauge for the charge level of your house bank. At-rest voltage is a pretty good indicator of charge level, but unfortunately the batteries on a boat in use are rarely at rest. If the battery is being discharged - say a refrigerator is running- it will register lower than true voltage. If it is being charged, the voltage reading will be huge. Even if neither is occurring at the moment, batteries "recover" for several hours after discharge. The voltage also rises for some time after charging stops. For an accurate assessment of charge level based on battery voltage, the batteries should have rested for 24 hours. In practice, you will get a fairly accurate reading of battery condition after a couple hours of rest. A good time to check battery voltage on a cruising boat is just before sunrise. The cycle time for electric refrigeration will be at its longest, there are likely to be few other loads, and any fixed solar panels will still be dormant.

For more tips on proactive maintenance, purchase Don Casey's This Old Boat today!

Choosing and Using Binoculars

Buy the best binoculars you can afford, perhaps having a cheaper second pair for general crew use. Strong, waterproof binoculars with a rubber coating are best on boats to protect against inevitable bumps. Binoculars are categorized by their magnification and the size of the object lens, which determines how much light is admitted. A pair of 7 x 50 binoculars makes a good choice. A magnification higher than 7 makes the binoculars difficult to hold steady, unless they have built-in stabilization, and an object lens smaller than 2 in (50mm) will not work well in low light levels. Some types have a built-in compass and/or a range finder.

When using binoculars on a moving boat, try to brace the lower half of your body and allow the upper half to move with the roll to keep the binoculars as steady as possible. The boats companionway is often a good place to position yourself, as it allows you to brace yourself at waist height. If you wear glasses, make sure the binoculars have rubber eyepieces that fit snugly against the glasses and exclude extraneous light.

The Complete Sailing Manual is the most comprehensive and informative book on sailing available, and will immediately become your teacher, advisor, and counselor for all your sailing questions and needs. Purchase Steve Sleights The Complete Sailing Manual today!

Is Your Boat Worth Upgrading?

This is the $64,000 question, and it is seldom easily answered. Some pundit long ago said that owning a boat is like standing in a cold shower tearing up $50 bills, and he was probably talking about a new boat, never mind a ten- or twenty-year-old boat! At what point do you stop the bleeding, sell, and look for a different boat?

Well, having upgraded a lot of older boats, Ive given this question some serious thought. While maintaining and upgrading the C&C 33 and Tartan 44 we used as test boats at Practical Sailor magazine, detailed records were kept of costs and man-hours. The short answer, I think, is that a boat is not worth upgrading when the cost to get it sea-ready exceeds resale value. Why throw good money after bad? But three are other considerations. Many of the old, classic designs are no longer made. Take the Vanguard, designed by Phil Rhodes and built by Pearson Yachts during the 1960s. You wont find its beautiful sheer on any modern boat. Say you can buy a 1966 model for $18,000; you could easily spend $25,000 repowering, re-rigging, and installing new electronics and safety gear. Now youve got $43,000 invested. You cruise it for five years and then sell it for - what? Maybe your original $18,000, if youre lucky? So the boat cost you $5,000 for each year of operation - but if it made you happy, who cares?!

For additional advice and information on ways to upgrade cruising sailboat, purchase Spurr's Guide to Upgrading Your Cruising Sailboat today!

Boom Preventer

When sailing downwind there is always the danger of an accidental jibe. One way to prevent this occurring is to rig a boom preventer which fixes the boom on one side of the boat.

Once you have rigged the line, ease out the mainsheet until the boom is out slightly too far and then pull in the boom preventer until it is just taut and secure it. The mainsheet is then pulled in to fix the boom in position. To jibe deliberately you must of course remove the boom preventer first and then fix it in position on the new side after the jibe. Another practice is to shackle the boom vang to a pad-eye abaft the shroud or to a toe rail or stanchion ring.

For more hints and tips on sailing techniques for both the beginner and experienced sailor, purchase Bob Bonds The Handbook of Sailing today!