Back to boat related stuff with retail therapy!

Ok - so yesterday I was peeved off with 'work'... TODAY is Saturday and despite having planned to go in for 5 hours this morning, I decided at 5am when Andy's alarm went off that I wouldn't and laid in bed until nearly 7 (in my world this is defined as a 'lay in')...

Sorry about yesterdays rant - like I said, this place (as in blog thingy) is my 'dear diary' where I can vent without having much risk I'll offend someone.  ANYWAY, moving on, today I've been out for a wander down the canal briefly  - a quick circular route up and over a wobbly bridge and passed our mooring place.  As I was walking down the towpath, wishing I'd brought a hat with me, I spotted a chap taking his toilet cassette to the disposal point.

This is a common enough occurrence but he was lugging this thing - presumably full of unmentionables  by carrying it at chest height.  To me this seemed rather a hard way to do it... Surely a  25 litre container must be blooming heavy - it looked heavy to me at any rate.  Having already given quite a lot of thought to this, we've bought a folding sack barrow for lack of a better term.  It's got a telescopic handle to reduce the need to stoop and will easily accommodate 2 "full" cassettes or perhaps a 20 litre jerry(gerry?) can of diesel.

  

When folded it takes up no space at all

And when full extended, it's a comfortable height.

It was only £20 from Maplins and it feels quite sturdy - according to the blurb on the packaging, it can hold up to 70kgs...

You may notice however, it doesn't specify being useful to carry poo off your boat ;-)   ... well I suppose MOST people buying them, won't be doing that will they?

For the most part, neither will we I suppose  - we're having 2 toilets on our boat... the main being the macerator which will feed to a tank under the bed in the main bedroom/cabin.  Our 2nd one being for emergency use WHEN the macerator breaks down or we get iced in somewhere... and even then only for liquid use unless it's an absolute emergency... 

It's a certainty that after a few minutes chatting with a boater, the conversation WILL end up heading down the 'pump out verses cassette' debate...  when it does, we'll of course be ready for it by having both!  You could argue that taking up a 2ft wide space of the available 41ft having a 2nd toilet is wasteful but it's our boat and we want the option.  Pump outs of the main tank currently cost about £20 a time...  so there may come a point in the future when we DO use the cassette in a bid to save money and if that is the case, we'll change over in the main bathroom and then turn the 2nd loo in to a wardrobe or granny flat!

Until next time...