It’s all fun and games until you find mold/mould!
Erin with the fan of 1,000 crevices.
I believe I’ve said it before, but I’ve read several times about how the cruising life can be the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows. I honestly couldn’t conceive how choosing your own adventure, and living by your own rules, while often in sunny locales, could bring the lowest of lows. However, in the past year I’ve been schooled on this a little, including the past few days.
Firstly, in the past week, a fellow cruising boat has been taken down by Covid, and Stu, Ellie and I have also been sick (while presently testing negative). Ellie had a fever of 39 degrees (102.9 Fahrenheit) for about 24 hours, and Stu and I have had a succession of sore throat, dry cough, and now we both have congested coughs. Needless to say, that’s thrown a wrench in our usual galavanting, eliminated our tasty dinners out and stopped short our swimming lessons. Thankfully we’re all recovering and hopefully we will be able to get back our daily adventuring soon.
Last night, while Ellie was in the midst of her fever and waking up regularly asking for water, having feverish dreams, and generally not sleeping well, Stu had the delight of sleeping with her (we figured one of us should). I though I’d drawn the long straw by going to sleep with Lily (well, not really since our bed is way more comfortable, but still, no fever dreams hopefully), but she made a fool of me by having her own personal awake wiggle party from 2am to 5am.
Upon my groggy waking, I glanced behind my head into the small storage space that sits in front of the girls’ bed (forward in the bow of the boat), and noticed a series of black spots spreading over…well…everything. I noticed some additional fuzzy white spots on the cushions as well. Delightful.
Mold is, by no means, an uncommon foe for boaters in the tropics. And, having officially crossed the Tropic of Cancer somewhere between La Paz and Mazatlan, we are definitely in the tropics. With the humidity common to these areas, it is very easy for little bits of bacteria to rapidly flourish, especially in any spaces that are low on light or air flow. We wake up every morning these days with a layer of condensation on everything outside of the boat, including all the outside cushions, towels or clothing items we left outside overnight. In the space in front of the girls’ berth, there is a small portlight (window in the side of the hull of the boat), but we’ve generally left it closed up until now so as to not only prevent Lily from throwing things outside of it into the water (which appears to be a source of endless entertainment), but to keep their room dark while sleeping (it has a blackout film on the window itself, but needs to be closed to work well in the morning).
In addition to the condensation that develops in this current climate, we have some small deck leaks that contribute water to this space when we’re either in a spicy sea state, or washing the boat deck. Since the boat was the dirtiest it has ever been after being in Puerto Peñasco for a few months, the decks have been washed a lot in the last month (and STILL look dirty, but that’s a story for another day). As a result, once Stu pulled everything out, there was a nice little pool of water right in the very bow - not very helpful when battling mold!
So, while Stu and I would both rather be relaxing in the cockpit, reading our books and watching the HUGE iguana on the bush across the dock reign over his territory with his nodding head and bright orange waddle, instead we got to spend the day with mold. That day looked like this:
pull everything out of their room and the small storage space onto the deck and trampoline;
wipe down as much as we could with white vinegar;
set up a vinegar bath for the toys that were in the moldy toy bins, rinse, repeat;
spread said toys out on a towel on the trampoline to dry;
regularly chase kids away from their toys before they’d been properly cleaned;
disconnect the fan from the space, and proceed to excavate it from the entirely disgusting layer of mold covering the whole thing (that’s what I’m doing on the dock in the first picture);
go through the rest of the toys, cushions and blankets that were in the space and determine what needed to be tossed/kept/cleaned;
put lifejackets on kiddos and set up bucket of water to play with on dock;
commence scrubbing enclosure curtains for cockpit that had been stored in storage space;
remove Ellie from dock after complete meltdown watching her sister spray water from a toy duck into the water beside her (4 year old logic is awesome);
continue scrubbing enclosure curtains;
pull Lily from the dock because Ellie needs a bum wipe and can’t keep Lily on the dock alone;
finish scrubbing storage curtains;
everyone gets hungry:
lunch time;
Lily nap time;
cockpit rest time because, well, Stu and I still have the plague;
interrupt rest time to entertain Ellie, so decide to do her letters book (she loves her ‘school time’);
Stu tries Bar Keepers Friend on mold stains, no dice;
Stu tries Mr. Clean magic eraser on mold stains, no dice;
Stu scrubs mold stains with bleach - SLOW process (this is after he’d wiped away all the mold - just getting the remaining stains);
replace all toys in toy bins;
cover entire surface of storage room with magic green solution from boat neighbour - supposed to help prevent future growth!
wait for everything to dry;
put everything back, and make a promise to ourselves to open the port lights daily, to keep the fan running all the time and to check more regularly for mold.
Stu, scrubbing the room from top to bottom.
Time will (probably, rather quickly) tell whether we got it all, and whether the magic green solution has any effect at all. But, we have learned our lesson that we’re officially in a new climate and need to be thinking through everything on the boat in a very different way. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, that’s for sure!
*I have used the American spelling of mold, instead of the British spelling of mould, only because it won the auto-correct battle and no longer corrects regularly to ‘mild’. Also, between the two of us, we’re entirely more British than American, I think.
