Thinking beyond the pail
Issue 78 : May/Jun 2011
Aboard Mystic the “ship’s bucket” is an important piece of gear. When it’s inactive, it holds the vacuum cleaner and is buried deep in the port cockpit locker on top of the even more deeply buried fenders. We bring it out to sluice down the deck after a muddy anchor recovery. We use it with a toilet plunger to wash the laundry. And we use it to rinse the bilge after showering in the saloon. In fact, it has too many uses to list here.
At least it used to do all those things.
These days it has competition. Much as we love the old bucket, there are problems with it. It is hard to get out of the locker. It is hard to control how much water gets in it when we throw it over the side. And it is very hard lifting it up to the deck if it gets completely full. As our backs get older, this becomes more significant.
We made the “other ship’s bucket” from a 4-liter plastic vinegar bottle, but you could use any number of other containers of similar shape and about 1-gallon capacity.
Study the construction of your new streamlined 1-gallon bucket. You need to cut two holes in it. One will enlarge the existing mouth enough for your boathook pole to fit through it. The other will be in the front under the existing mouth. The second hole is for filling and pouring. Make all holes round so you create no stress concentrations but small enough so the container retains its strength.
Fasten a cord to the jug’s handle so you can retrieve it once you have pushed it down into the water with the boathook. Properly deployed, the container will fill with just about 1 gallon of water each time. This will be fairly easy to lift back to the deck. The same handle will be convenient for carrying the “bucket” and for pouring from it.
There you have it, the good old 1-gallon jug bucket. Easier to stow, easier to lift, easier to pour. Total cost should be almost nothing and your back will thank you.
Jerry Powlas co-founded Good Old Boat and is its technical editor. An engineer by training, he has a bent for the practical.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
