Toilet Troubles

September 27th (Friday)
We awoke to a beautiful morning of almost clear blue sky. There were a few pinkish clouds clustered around some of the mountains and in the valleys, but the rest of the sky was clear. It was 8 degrees in our cockpit, the coldest yet.
When I flushed our toilet in the back of the boat in the morning I heard a very odd crack-like sound. The plunger got very hard to pump and I could not suck any more water in, although I was still able to pump water out. Because of this happening I thought about preventative maintenance and about how our forward toilet was getting stiffer to pump. I took a bit of cooking oil to flush down it as it helps to keep the pump part lubricated. When I started flushing the forward toilet I got a couple of pumps through, and then it started to leak at the upper seal. I was also unable to switch it to empty the bowl. What are the odds of both of our toilets stopping to work within the same 10 minutes. I felt like I must be cursed. 

Since we didn't want to have both toilets out of order we proceeded to take apart the top part of the forward toilet's plunging assembly. It is an easy procedure, which is not actually at all disgusting. However, we sure did not expect what we found to be the issue. A poor little Gunnel fish, long like an eel, was trapped inside as far through as it could get. This is what was preventing the switch lever from switching from drawing water in, to pumping water out. The poor thing was unable to turn around, or to really move at all. When I tried to pick it up, it was so slimy that it just slipped back through my fingers. We ended up using a clothespin to grip it and lift it out.

When we put it in a bowl of water it started to swim around. We let the poor little guy go, and couldn't believe the fish’s bad luck, and our bad luck. At least it was an easy fix. We didn't tackle the back toilet to see what the problem was there, so that will be another day's project.

In the afternoon we headed to the hot spring, but by this time it had actually become somewhat windy, 15 knots, gusting to 20. We paddled our kayaks to shore against the wind, and when we got there we were warm from paddling, but chilled from the spray. Ah, it felt so nice to relax in the hot water.

We watched as our resident family of otters, river otters not sea otters, came running down the shore. We have seen them a few times, and we watched them from the hot springs the other day as they were feeding out in the bay. Today they came running out of the grass and across the very long mud flat towards the ocean. They were in a perfect line running one after the other, and three eagles were chasing them. The last otter was lagging a bit behind, and we watched as one of the eagles swooped down towards it with its talons outstretched. At the last second the otter ducked and crouched itself flat to the ground. The eagle missed and passed by. The otter took its chance and ran for the sea after its family. They all made it safely. We were surprised that the otters were that far away from the ocean, and that they chose to run over exposed ground instead of swimming down the stream.
We had a nice quick paddle back home from the hot springs in our kayaks as we were now going with the wind, which had increased even more. We talked to a guy from a powerboat that had just pulled in, and he said it was very stormy out in the channel.
Back at home the wind calmed off, and we hoped for a quiet night. Unfortunately, after remaining calm for a couple of hours the wind picked up again just as we headed to bed.