Welcome Gong Gong!

Let's talk about toilets. Now if you get squeamish hearing about pees and poos, stop reading here.

To better illustrate how cruising life can swing from unbelievable euphoric high one minute to despairingly low the next minute, let me tell you about this morning.

I woke up refreshed and poked my head out to really pinch myself that yes, we were on a mooring ball and surrounded by water. Incredible.

As I was doing yoga on the foredeck, I realized being upside down on a mooring ball, and probably at anchor, is not so easy and i would need to get used to the boat swinging and bobbing up and down.

So I'm enjoying this serenity and peace in Downward Dog when I hear Tai doing a poo down below in our heads (toilet). 

No biggie, I thought, I just hope he remembers to put his used toilet paper in the bin and not in the toilet bowl. Yup, we don't flush toilet paper, or anything else for that matter. Only pees and poos are allowed to be flushed.

When we were at a dock at Gold River and Mahone Bay, we would go and use the marina's washroom. You cannot flush your waste out into the sea water if you're at dock and there's a rule where you can only do that if you're 3 nautical miles offshore.

We could have used our own heads at the dock and just have our poo and pee go directly into our boat's holding tank but nobody really does that because you don't want to fill that up so readily or else you'll have to pump it out somewhere else or be 3 nautical miles offshore before you can dump it.

Anyway, so we have only used our heads once, on our first passage when Aila had to do a poo. That was flushed out no problem.

We have 2 electric heads on our boat, one in the front and one in the back (aft).

Our aft holding tank is the one we mistakenly filled with fresh potable water, thinking it was the water tank.

We have always planned to use our front heads only, leaving the aft heads and shower for storing our wet weather gear, some toolboxes and other large items.

Although we didn't intend to buy a boat with two electric heads, it's what she came with. Most boats have heads with a manual pump where you pump out your excrement and then flush it with sea water.

Don't get me wrong. Having electric heads is a luxury, but that also means there's more to go wrong if they malfunction. I'm not above the bucket and chuck it method so if it comes to it, I'll do that. But that also isn't possible at a dock.

So back to Tai's poo this morning. When it came time for him to flush, it would not go. We could hear the flushing mechanism go as if it were supposed to flush, but nothing went down. Just minutes before I had flushed my waste so we were puzzled.

Why didn't his stuff flush? Did i do my flush incorrectly and it was now malfunctioning? Did Tai not have enough fiber in his diet?

After a bit of fiddling around with buttons, I enlisted the help of a husband and a plunger and eventually it went down. Phew. Disaster averted.

I had heard previous cruisers needing to go down below into the water with a mask and plunger and actually go to the thru hull and plunge the blockage out ... and then quickly retreat before a mass of brown sticky substance envelops them.

I hope that will never be us. But only time will tell.

As for the rest of our day? It was awesome.

We dinghy'd with Darlene and John to the famous Lahave Bakery and bookstore, hunkered down in the afternoon while it rained a bit, then welcomed Kam Wong back to Nova Scotia. He's stopping to see us for a few days on his way back to Ottawa after a trip to Europe.

Tonight we attended the Captain's spaghetti dinner at the Lahave River Yacht club. Great food and we met some extremely friendly people wanting to know us and hear about our travel plans. The hospitality is unreal!

Tonight the forecast is calling for rainstorms. I can feel our boat rocking around as I lay in bed, but I know our mooring ball is safe.

Time to get some rest as tomorrow will bring a whole host of new events and emotions.

As cruisers often say, in this life the highs are incredibly high. And the lows are crappy.... sometimes literally.

Morning view. 360 degrees uninterrupted. Bliss.

Tai has become the expert "Specialty" maker which consists of fizzy water and lemon.

Eeeeewwww. The moment I realized I had just washed my hands using the
salt water foot pump which brings in sea water from outside.... literally seconds
after I had flushed my waste from the head to outside in the sea. The intake
and exit thru hull are just a few meters apart! Gross.

A wet and bumpy ride to Lahave Bakery. It was worth it.

Beautiful desk and memorabilia at the Lahave bakery.

Loved this sign at the bakery.

Lahave bakery. Amazing. You can smell this place long before you can see it.

We found another beautiful bookstore. We each got to
choose one free book from their FREE shelf too!

Reading about Terry  Fox at the bookstore.

 

Our boat on a mooring ball. You can see the ball at the bow (front) of our boat.
These balls are placed strategically in a mooring field and held by a heavy
cement block under the water. It's easy to motor up slowly to one, grab the lines
sticking out from the ball with a boat hook and attach yourself to the ball. Bearing in
mind, you have to trust that these mooring balls are safe and secure and have
been maintained over the years. The last thing you want is to wake up in the
morning and find that the rope did not hold for some reason and that you are no
longer attached to the ball.

Our boat as we approach it from behind in the dinghy.
The swim ladder folds out to extend into the water. You can also see
our radar dome sticking out in the back.

Cooperatively making a welcome sign for Gong Gong.

Matt Macgyver Thornington using an old SSB cable and some foam pads to
create a padded floor and handle setup for the kids on our wet and bumpy
dinghy rides. Because they have to kneel on the bottom of the dinghy, their
knees often bear the brunt of the waves.

Gong Gong is back for a visit and he's brought more tricks up his sleeve!

Geography lesson. Learning where we are, where we have
sailed from and where we're headed to.

Aila being gifted a (fake) pearl necklace from Donna, someone we
just met tonight at the Captain's dinner at the Lahave River Yacht club.

Behind the Lahave River Yacht club is this cute meandering
creek, leading to a temple ruin.

You saw it here first, folks. Captain Orval Banfield,
Master Bluenose II from 1999-2001, being a doggie!!