Toilet training, on a boat.

No, not for dogs but for people!

The toilets or heads as they’re called in proper nautical term, on most sailboats are below sea level.  Water, usually sea water (fresh water is too precious to wasted flushing toilets), is first pumped in from the sea, then this is subsequently pumped out.  This process flushes the heads.  This can either be a manually pumped toilet or an electric ones (running off the boat’s house batteries) as in the case of Micasa’s two toilets.  Either manual or electric, they are proned to blockage if toilet paper is used.  Clearing a blocked toilet is highly unpleasant and a thing to be avoided, almost at all cost! 

No toilet paper?  Use water, in Micasa it’s courtesy of a bidet spray.

If a guest on Micasa is not familiar with a boat’s toilet (head).  I would teach them how to use the electric toilet switch.  Shorter pumping time for just liquids (5 seconds) and longer (10-15 seconds) if solids are involved.

Now, if it is a gentleman, there will be an additional instruction……Sit on the bowl to wee wee!  It doesn’t matter how sharp a shooter he may be, a boat rocks and the target becomes a moving target and the shooter himself could be stumbling about!  So this whole process can get very messy (and wet). Hence the need for this additional instruction. 

For the ladies, it’s business as usual, hence that last instruction isn’t required.

Next to Micasa’s main toilet is the shower cubicle.  Not a big one by any means.  Built only for up to L size.  If you’re an XL or larger, forget it!  The shower cubicle floor is below sea level too.  The water drains into a sump underneath a grate and this will have to be pumped out when the cubicle floor starts to flood, by pressing on a momentary toggle switch. 

Sailor dog didn’t need toilet training. She knows better then to poo poo or wee wee in the boat. If away from the marina for extended period, there’s a synthetic tuff mat that I would lay out on the foredeck for BooBee, for both types of business.  Thus far, sailor dog has not been away from land for extended period of time yet.  She had wee wee on this mat before and I have no doubt that she will know where to do her do do.

Life on a boat has a different set of rules all borned out of practicality.  After a while, they do make sense.  BooBee picked them up fast enough and she listens and remembers.

There is a silver lining in every cloud, they said and so is there a life to be lived to its fullest, in any walks of life. 

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