Bilge Composting
- Ann Cognito
- Sep 22, 2021
- 4 min read
I bailed the bilge. It’s pretty dank, and needs work, but there’s often things to learn in the dark and uncomfortable places, and bilges are no exception. I learned a few things.
I learned that Mr Myrtle’s dishes spill too much. They’re small and good for travel but not so much for a boat. He’s so picky about dishes, but he needs two good nontippy dishes, maybe 6” or 7” wide and that deep, so they aren’t in the way but hold a good amount when only half full — space for slooshing!
I learned that I am still really bad at caulking, and that the stuff I used most recently was probably too old… my port vberth window looks like a pastry chef on crack mistook it for an open-face canoli.
I also learned (yet again) that there is not water coming from some unseen hole in the hull. Not that I thought there was, just always nice to know!
However, there are two leaks in the head… not mine (arguably), Skoro’s!
For nonboatly folks, the bathroom on a boat is not called a bathroom, nor is it a washroom, or a lavatory, or any of the usual terms. It’s called the head — and please comment if you know why!!! (And why is the bootstripe called the bootstripe?)
Anyways. The head. There’s a small leak where the cords from the solar panel come into the cabin. I wonder if running the cords through a plug cut from a pool noodle would work? Or is there something made for exactly this purpose?
The other leak is also small. It’s where part of the former toilet plumbing had a vent (the stack?). The bit of pipe is there, and it’s not open, but a liiiiiiiiiittle bit of water makes its way in down the bit of pipe. Not sure how to fix that either.
However, after moving Skoro next door to Sirens on the 27, I’d better figure that out. (Or before!)
We’ll have a month on the docks there, unless weather decides on an earlier haul out. I’m thankful for a good place to camp after that (a friend near Perth)… but I love my boat, and so does Mr Myrtle Sir. Hopefully the weather lets us stay aboard as long as possible.
That brings me back to not going south till spring.
Really, I’d expect me to be swimming in a pit of despair a lot darker and danker than Sloro’s little bilge. Packing my expectations into borrowed storage bins is so sad. Mr Myrtle is soaking up all the boat and dock time he can, snuggling right into both.
There’s a method of working with despair called compost. Grief composting is most often spoken of, but the method applies well to all the dark upsetting gunk in our heads.
You work with it, in warm darkness, with air. You turn it, carefully, in layers. You feed it things to make it grow in healthy ways , and eventually, some tiny shoot of green starts finding its way towards light. Something small, and rooted in our own soil and manure… rooted in our darkness, but through composting, promising more.
A permaculture friend talks about this process in permaculture terms, as gardening the self while gardening the world. Another activist friend writes of self care as an act of deep activism.
It’s a way of using pain or negativity as ground for growth.
There’s nothing growing in Skoro’s bilge, but the time spent bailing is meditative in its way, and gives me somewhere safe to think and feel my own dark things.
Yes. I’m beyond disappointed. I’m devastated… except no, I’m not.
I’m looking at this as time to do what I lost time for. Planning, organizing, plotting (charts, not anything dire (unless you count dismantling and replacing capitalism and colonialism)), repairs to boat and budget… so much.
It’s not just about keeping busy. It’s about keeping active with something that draws on, or is related to, the opposite of our darkness. The organisms in a compost heap use waste and air to create life. I can use my frustration about my own missed window, and my fears regarding time and the global ecosystem, to feed my need to make a difference. The background work for this sailboat project is large… and in my own weird storytelling gyspyhermit way, it’s part of doing something positive to face the climate crisis.
It’s something I believe in, and investing myself in it more will make it, and I, better.
It’s the same as how we can face peatbogs of frustration or despair by protesting ecocide and human rights violations, or campaigning for a heartfelt cause, or becoming an involved part of a positive community, or writing what needs hearing, or painting murals that cause ripple effects in the collective consciousness, or planting trees, or whatever we’re each drawn to do. Use the energy of the decaying matter of our expectations to fertilize something. We may not know what grows from it… but it’s worth it just to know something may.
With hope and determination,
Ann
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If you can help with repairs and other boatly doings, either with advice or elbow grease or materials or by adding some financial compost to grow the boat budget out of the bilge zone, I’ll love you forever (though if you’re reading my determined little blog, I already love you anyways!)
Sporadic and one-time support through Chuffed, at
Ongoing support via Patreon (I’m still having trouble posting there, my apologies), at
Thank you… your help means the world to me, and so do you.
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A few photos from Merrickville (but mostly I’ve been busy)…
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