Strange odor

[Jay Muller]

We have a 2 year old Beneteau First 40.7 we buoy race on the weekend. As there is a porta potty at the end of our dock, we encourage our crew to make use of it prior to heading for the course. As a result we really have never had any waste in our small 6 gallon holding tank since we have have had the boat. An exception is the Mac race where we do have some waste but it is usually pumped out within a day of getting to the island. There has been an instance where we may have left waste in the holding tank for a month, but we fushed it out sveral times and added tank treatment and haven't used it sense. There is now a strange odor under the sink wher the tank is. I really can't say that it smells 'foul', just strange. This year the water in Lake Michigan is particularly clear, but when I pump water into the bowl, it smells pretty rank. Could this odor be a result of the lake water? Peggy's article indicated that the hoses can be a source of odor, could I be getting this from the lake water?Any thoughts are appreciated.Das Boot

 

[Peggie Hall/Head Mistress]

You have two separate problems

The first is your odor under the sink...my guess is permeated waste hose...most likely the pumpout hose. Sea water/fresh water has nothing to do with hose permeation...that's caused by waste left standing in hoses. Since the pumpout hose comes from the bottom of the tank, any waste in the tank will also rise in that hose to the level in the tank. And since your odor is confined to the locker where the tank is, my guess is, that's the hose that's permeated.If the odor is a sharp/sour/sickenly sweet/almost-but-not-quite-sewer odor, that's definitely what it is. The cure: replace the hose with SeaLand "OdorSafe" hose. Expensive at about $8/ft...but the only hose that's "bulletproof" against odor permeation. If my description doesn't fit your odor, we need to keep looking...read the articles "head related odors" and "boat odor isn't all in your head" in the HM forum reference library. As for your head intake odor, I suspect you've sucked up some animal or vegetable marine life that's gotten trapped, and is dead and decaying...a friend managed to pull in a minnow that died in his head intake hose--it was AWFUL! Or it could be weeds trapped in the rim of the bowl, especially if you're seeing black flecks in the bowl. Only thing to do is start hunting for it. Start by removing the intake hose from the boat and blast it out with water (unless it's short enough for you to look through it to see if anything is stuck in it). If it's not there, you're just gonna have to hunt it down...the pump and the channel in the bowl rim. Flushing out the channel MAY require removing the bowl to blast it out with water. Hard-core racers think heads are an invention of the devil anyway...this isn't doing anything to improve their image with you, is it?

 

[Jay Muller]

Thank you

Thank you Peggy, your odor description is on the 'head' (sorry!). On the other hand, we are one of the few boats that actually allow the crew into the head!Jay