Carlos the Cockroach

I was in the aft cabin helping August remove a few difficult screws and Paige and Andrea were in the main cabin and forward head working away when the scream finally came. It was the admiral who discovered our stowaway! I quickly made my way forward with visions of blood or some other trauma flashing through my mind. How do you hurt yourself with a screwdriver was all I could think. As I arrived on the scene I found the Admiral attempting to mount a courageous attack. There she stood in her finest combat attire, a screwdriver in one hand and the vacuum in the other. She was definitely shell shocked, and seemed unable to make the final offensive or lead her troops into battle. I hurriedly glanced at Paige to see if perhaps she was the victim, however a quick glance revealed no blood there either. I didn’t understand. What had happened? Where was the injury, who had suffered it? Very slowly the admiral pointed with the screwdriver. In almost a whisper she slowly mouthed the dreaded word. Cockroach!

Carlos the Cockroach RIP
RIP Carlos the Cockroach

Now to be honest I am not the greatest fan of creepy crawly’s either, but this is our home damnit, or will be eventually and as the Admiral, I would expect that upon finding a stowaway, she would immediately take charge and either arrest said stowaway, or make them walk the plank or something, but in this case, I assume she felt that it was time to delegate responsibility to those beneath her. Paige, was already at the top of the companionway preparing to abandon ship and refused to come below to meet Carlos. I quickly grabbed the vacuum and put an end to Carlos forever. Or at least until we have to empty the vacuum. Well, of course Carlos mounted a strong offensive and absolutely refused to go down the hose, and as soon as I shut the vacuum off, he fell out of the end of the nozzle onto the cabin sole. This inspired another round of “war cries” from the peanut gallery, brave souls they are. By this point now, The admiral, August and Paige were all gathered around the companionway and I could tell by the look in their eyes that it was each man for themselves and they would take no remorse in leaving their comrades behind, or trampling overtop of each other in order to make their escape.

IMG_0791

Eventually the screw that we had sucked up previously, fell out of the hose as well, and both screw and castaway were consumed by the trusty shop vac.

By the way, I forgot to mention that Carlos the Cockroach appears to have been dead for several years. Carlos, prior to his passing, found the only dry spot in the entire boat, tucked way in behind a piece of the pegboard that lines the inner hull, inside the head cupboard and was slowly mummified

It was only a matter of time before we found him. All of the indications were there, and the further we dug into the bowels of Akupara, reducing and eliminating places of cover and discovering new exciting secret locations, the higher the odds were that we would discover him!

We have found approximately 30 cockroach motels and at least 10 spots where there was cockroach paste, that brown sticky poisonous bug killer had been smeared in high traffic areas. So we knew at one point in time Akupara had a serious case of stowaways.

So the good news I guess is that the previous owners took the issue seriously, but the bad news is that with all of the hiding spots, we were still a little worried about finding them. Thankfully, when we finally did find Carlos the Cockroach yesterday, his days had ended peacefully a long time before.

 

 

 

Switching things up.

Sometimes you just have to stop what you are doing and switch to something else and that is exactly what we did.

We had an errand to run prior to going to Akupara this morning, we dropped off the 2 scuba tanks that were on board when we bought her to see if they were still good. 1 was toast but one passed the internal visual and appears to be salvageable so we left it to be hydro tested and have new seals installed. Of course since we went in with 2 tanks there was no way I could leave without 2 tanks so I purchased a good used one that passed visual and hydro last month. We pick up the original one next weekend.

So when we arrived at Akupara we just weren’t in the mood to fight with nuts and bolts on deck fittings so we changed things up and began dismantling the interior starting in the v-berth.

Behind the ceiling in the v-berth |(ceiling refers to the wood slats that are on the sides of the v-berth) we found 40 years of dust dirt and grime. I don’t think anyone has ever tried to clean behind it before and it is so black that the only way I can think to clean it off is to pressure wash it, so as soon as we have all the rest of the interior out, that is exactly what we will do.

We also marked out the areas on deck that we will need to re-core and we did 2 test spots with the belt sander to see exactly how hard it is going to be to sand it down. Thankfully, it seemed to go fairly well and in 15 minutes I had about 3 square feet sanded down quite nicely with 80 grit.

Tomorrow we will try to resume the removal of the deck fittings.

We have also decided to take out stock in a stainless steel screw company as we have probably discarded  a full bucket of screws by now and will need to replace all of them.  😉

 

http://youtu.be/C0L7NeWkQlM

http://youtu.be/C0L7NeWkQlM