Apparently I didn’t get enough of sewage hose on Peregrine, so we decided to tackle replacing the hoses on True North.  They are now 10 years old, look like they may be leaking, and smell a little bit so it was time.  I was having a shitty (ha!) morning and every one of these hoses fought me the entire time. Since the boat was built in Argentina she has metric hoses.  That makes the new hose super tight to fit onto all of the fittings on the tank and every hole that the hoses pass through had to be enlarged.  Super irritating.  I had enthusiastic hopes that we would get both heads done, but only managed starboard today.

I had some design issues I wanted to fix on this side.  The tank vent was kinked in two places so I added an elbow to help the bend and lowered the vent filter.  It should flow much better now!

We used the nice flexible sani-flex hose that should last another 10 years and is much easier to install than normal tubing.  It’s worth the $9 a foot or whatever it cost.

I tackled the port side today.  This one was different because the valve was 2 spaces aft instead of directly underneath the tank and the hoses all ran back through the bulkhead. Luckily I didn’t have nearly as much trouble with these hoses as I did the ones on the other side. Everything slid onto the hose barb fittings fairly easily and the holes through the bulkhead were large enough for the new hoses so I didn’t have to dig out the hole saw and enlarge them.  As predicted, it didn’t *all* go smoothly.  I ended up with sewage in more places than anticipated (included on myself…yay) but we were done shortly after lunchtime with not a lot of fuss.  I still didn’t get any before pictures so you’ll just have to make do with the after shot since it’s the exact same thing as before only the hoses are cleaner.  I did re-route the overboard discharge line to eliminate a high point, so it should all flow nice and smooth now!

Another aspect to the sewage installation besides the hoses are the bidet seats that we bought.  We had these same ones on Peregrine and loved not having to lug around toilet paper and dispose of it last season in the Bahamas. (for those of you who don’t know, marine toilets are finicky and toilet paper either gets clogged inconveniently or you have to hoard it and throw it away later which is also not cool).  The seats themselves replace the ones that come on the toilets and look like they were made to be there.  The water supply is just based on system water pressure and doesn’t require any electricity to operate.  All I had to do was cut in a tee fitting with the hose that went to the fitting on the bidet and we were done!

Now that this is done we can stock the heads with supplies and move on to our next project!