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TODAY I LEARNED

Mosquitoes love your bilges.

The other night we were being mauled by Mosquitoes, they are the bain of a cruisers existence. Live in a hot climate and you’ll probably co-exist with Mosquitoes, complete with all the viruses they like to share around.

So whilst we contemplated the likelihood we had contracted malaria during our nocturnal wrestling with an unseen and mostly unheard adversary, I pondered where the hell they were coming from. We had diligently closed up at night time, burnt candles that we know disperse them, sprayed and even still we were being engaged with a complete army, not just despondent stragglers in the siege of Waiata blood letting.

The answer, as uncomfortable as it might seem is in our own hulls, the bilges!!! These lovely little water features of a boat , mostly filled , we would like to think, with either air or if something is not working as they should, salt water, are in fact mostly filled with rancid fresh water.

People are the problem, we exhale water vapour, sweat it out, spill stuff and it all ends up in the …. you got it, Bilges.

We’ll guess what, as soon as you have a mosquito onboard, they go looking for places to breed and … well bilges.

So the attack was from within!!! from the depths of our hulls like an alien invasion came the marauding Mosquitoes.

The answer of course is NOT to fill your bilges with Chlorine or some other toxic variety of chemical that might make you a target of the ecology police, but rather to just clean and drain your bilges regularly and if all else fails leave the odd Anti-Mossy tablet in there for good measure.

Also note, unless you have something wrong, all other water sources should drain to the bilge and in hot weather evaporate by just leaving them alone. So if you have water elsewhere…well you might need more than Mossy repellent.

Bombs away and a good night sleep to be had once you remember bilges will NOT remain dry as long as you remain living onboard. It’s a regular maintenance item.

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