I have been busy in my retirement. Among all my other accomplishments, can now be added "Professional Author"! That's right, what follows is the result of my writing skills and the helpful input from Mel on 'Diamond Lil' to send it into Living Aboard magazine. She did say that "they'll print almost anything", but that didn't slow me down at all!
What got me going was just the frustration of having a problem with a new part, the head, that if it was designed properly, wouldn't have broken from the git-go!



Wilcox Crittenden Santa Cruz Head Repair

Given a choice, women and truth be told many men as well, would prefer an electric head to the hand pump variety. Therefore, it was with this in mind I went shopping for the most heavy-duty electric head I could find, when my wife and I were outfitting our retirement cruising boat. Since I was still working, price was not especially important, but dependability was high on the list. I chose a Wilcox over the rest of the offerings. I cannot speak for how the others might have stacked up, but I feel comfortable addressing the one I choose and the Groco head it replaced.

The previous owner had a Groco electric head and over the five years of his cruising, found the water pumping systems to be inadequate as well. He had retrofitted two Jabsco Water Puppy pumps to handle the operations, one to it to pump raw water in, and another to pump the effluent discharge side. It seemed to work OK, just not heavy duty enough to handle the macerator discharge side very well. I know, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it! In retrospect, hindsight being what it is, I should have left it alone! However, I was not feeling comfortable using a Water Puppy as a macerator pump. Moreover, getting back to my dependability issue, I decided to replace the whole head.

Well, it has not quite been two years since I was the proud owner of a brand new head and as you can see, we are poopin’ in a bucket. The head died on a passage from the Rio Dulce region of Guatemala to Roatan, Honduras! Being at sea is never the most convenient time to be doing any repairs, head repairs especially

Upon reaching Roatan, I tried to calling the manufacturer. The first 800 # gave me another, and finally after being on hold a bit, a non 800 #, which after a lot of holding… now I know the “call is important to you“ routine, so why don’t you just answer it! I finally gave up and I tried email next at info.wilcoxcritt…etc. It has been over a week, and still no answer. (I never got one.) What is a person to do? There surely are no parts available in paradise! Dissembling the pump revealed that it had not ingested any gunk, only that the inlet impeller was slipping on the shaft in both directions! Some sort of tricky little grippers built into the inside bore of the impeller were intended to grip the shaft in one rotational direction and not in the other. The idea being that as the motor rotated one direction, the impeller engaged and raw water was drawn in and the other direction, it would ’slip’ on the shaft so that the macerator could evacuate the waste water from the bowl. The whole system relies an a few ridges molded into the bore of an impeller! People, is this any way to build something for the harsh marine environment? I expect that if our boat was used only on weekends and we had a fully stocked chandlery just out-side our front door, I might be tempted to buy a rebuild kit and do the job “right”, but the whole system just stinks, it should have been better engineered and not have broken in the 1st place!

The accompanying pictures show the “fix”. I had an Atwood 500 aerator pump aboard, (Where did I put those Water Puppies?) which I plumbed into the inlet side by using a couple of locally obtained garden hose repair barbs. I’m currently using the original Wilcox motor minus the B/S impeller to pump out the bowl. When and if that motor dies, I will not get another, but will use any brand of locally available macerator pump I can find and modify it to fit.

The head now works much better than it did when new! It’s quieter and pumps cleaner than ever before. Pushing the top of the electric switch fills and cleans the bowl while pushing the bottom, causes the macerator pump to evacuate the bowl.

The lesson is that simplicity and ease of repair along with availability of “local parts” should be foremost in the design of all marine equipment. In addition, when you are in paradise cruising, necessity is the mother of invention!

PS. I did use two hose clamps on all the ‘below the waterline’ connections.

Jim and Jeanie Long are currently living aboard and cruising the N.W. Caribbean aboard their 39’ Lancer motor sailor “Oasis”