Toilet Troubles

We had a great time in Italy, despite our second hotel being a reincarnation of Fawlty Towers, and I'll post a few photos once I've worked through the hundreds that I took.

Our original plan had been to leave Fox Marina last Tuesday after Chico came back from the kennels, but we had to extend our stay for a few days while we popped back to Manchester for an unexpected medical appointment on Thursday.

On Friday we went for a pump-out just before leaving, but after dropping one bar on the gauge nothing else moved and we realised we had a blockage.  We've had a few hiccups with pump-outs over the years which we put down to inefficient pumps but this was a real "oh shit bugger" moment. Alan who works in the marina kindly offered us the use of the pump-out machine on Saturday morning so we could cut a hole in the top of the tank and empty it that way. Roger had bought an inspection hatch for the tank the last time we had a problem about 6 months ago but as things seemed to have fixed themselves he'd put off installing it. Now seemed the ideal time and place so that's what we did.

Surprisingly it wasn't as smelly a job as we'd been expecting and by putting an extension pipe onto the pump-out hose we managed to get it right inside the boat and into the tank which was quickly emptied.  The cause of the problem then became very clear.  There was a large piece of sand paper in the tank, presumably from when it was manufactured, and it was this that was causing the problem by getting stuck on the end of the pump-out pipe and sealing it. While we had the tank open and the use of the pump-out machine we took the opportunity to chuck a load of fresh water into the tank and give it a good cleaning out.  Roger then fitted the new inspection hatch and hopefully we won't have any future problems.

I don't think that's bad.......only one blog about toilet problems in almost 5 years of blogging. Must be a record............