Did an early to bed and a very early to rise. About 02:30 to be exact. It allowed me to conduct a chore that had been on the back burner. The procedure was monitored once when Jason performed the duty on the Sea Trial down from Scarborough, but this would be my first solo endeavor. What duty you may ask? Emptying the head would be my reply.
One does not think of emptying the head as normally the contents of what goes in the head would be transferred to a holding tank. At the moment this is not the case on the Makina. There are generally three options. A holding tank which one needs to have emptied from time to time. A compost toilet which turns all the content which goes into the head into harmless material that one could spread on their rose bed. Or the head like in the days of my youth that was pumped out over the side.
The old head set up of pumping the contents overboard is banned in most civilized countries these days unless a certain number of miles off a country's coast. Two to ten miles are some of the ranges by my understanding. The advantage of having such an option is that once one is out of North America and the EU it gets much more difficult to find a facility that can pump out ones holding tank. So for deep sea or out of the way locations it would be a handy option to have.
The compost toilet is where my thoughts are leaning. That way one is not restricted by regulations of overboard dumping as well as not being prisoner to pump out facilities. This is what will probably be installed on Makina.
In the meantime we have a porta-potty. That is what was emptied this morning at about 03:00. It is surprisingly easy and clean to do. A little smelly but not the end of the world. My plan is to go with this setup until Halifax at least.
Once my covert duties were out of the way it was back to the boat to do some early morning internet-ting. Around 08:00 texted Pierre with some details of Roger's visit and to my surprise he was up and we started into a discussion about when to start out for Montreal. He called voice so that we could more easily talk about things.
It was decided that we would shoot for Monday or Tuesday. We talked about some last minute details that would need to be done as well as our concern about James who had to stay until Weds.; probably leaving Thursday.
He asked me to look into long term parking of his car at the marina and that he would come down tomorrow so that we could get our supplies in before everything closed for the long weekend.
With all our plans in place at a little after 09:00 headed up to the marina's office to pay my rent up to, and including Monday. They said that Pierre could park his car for about $50/week, which he seemed pleased with when texted about it.
Came back to the boat and checked in on Greg, a fellow found on a FB crew finding group, and low and behold he had replied to me the day before in a DM. He had been off on some driving adventure yet was still anxious to join me on the passage to Halifax. Well that changed things considerably.
Texted Pierre about it and we thought that this could be a good opportunity for James who was finding it difficult to find crew. In a convoy situation we could switch around from boat to boat; at least while going down through the locks. We decided to speak more of it tomorrow when he comes down. Suggested to Greg that we have a facetime session tomorrow when Pierre is here to get to know each other a bit better as well as to give him a virtual tour of Makina.
With a mission to have a look on the net for a dinghy as well as get set up with Navonics an electronic navigational system. When scrolling through Kijiji for dinghies my eyes began drooping and my lack of sleep started to catch up with me. Headed to the V-berth and watch a half of a UTube video which soon had me sound asleep.
Remained that way until 15:00!
Did some tidying up and washed the dishes then started in on an early supper at a little after 16:00.
Had a snacky, internet-ty, UTube watching kind of evening.
Had some interesting feedback from 
Will try to get some video clips during Pierre's visit to see how that feels.
May the wind be at your back!
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