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| Dinghy Dock, Nuka Hiva FP |
It is 1 am and I wake up with my wife shaking me, saying ‘Wake up, Wake up, you have to get him’ What! What is going on? I say. She says “He flew right by my face and went over behind the books.”
I say, “What is going on. What flew by your face?”
She says, “I think it is a cockroach, the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It flew in through the overhead hatch and landed on the bookshelf.”
“Well just find it and get rid of it, “ I say.
“No no, you have to do it, I am scared of i. it was so creepy .
“Okay, where did it go?”
And so begins the Great Cockroach Chase.
My wife is a great reader of books so she has an overstuffed bookshelf on her side of the bed plus a desk covered with stuff not yet put away. so I start pulling stuff off her desk to clear the battlefield . Then start pulling the books off one by one, ready with my washcloth to grab it when it came out of hiding. There it is. There it goes. Man, are they fast! It runs behind a bag of socks before I can pounce. The chase is on. I am afraid we are going to lose it and the next thing we will see is thousands of little ones taking over our boat. I admit, it is much faster than I am.
It is time to use my brain. how can I catch it? I need something better than my hands. How about the that house vacuum cleaner that we can’t find a place for on the boat. Yes, I can just ‘Suck-it-up’ with powerful suction. It works. I jam the hose behind the bag and it disappears. Have we got it or not? Cannot see it anywhere. Must be in the vacuum cleaner. Now we have to get it out. I take the machine on deck and take out the filter unit. We can’t see it though the plastic so I open the door to shake our visitor into the ocean it crawls out and I shake it into the water. it seems to swim well but is soon gone with the current. Whew!
We have made a point of rarely tying to a dock while cruising in Samoa in the 1980’s. We tried everything including bug bombs but could not get rid of them until we went back to Canada. Once again in the South Pacific we anchor or tie to mooing buoys to avoid them as well as having more ventilation. Still these big cockroaches about 2-3 inches long seem to fly from land. We have had them land on the boat when on passage 300 miles from any land.
✓ What can one do to avoid getting infested with cockroaches?
✓ Avoid tying up to docks.
✓ Use window and hatch screens.
✓ If one lands aboard, find it and get rid of it.
✓ Spread Borax liberally, especially in galley and eating areas.
✓ Keep the galley counters and floor clean of food crumbs.
✓ Cross your fingers and wear a lucky rabbits foot.
I say, “What is going on. What flew by your face?”
She says, “I think it is a cockroach, the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It flew in through the overhead hatch and landed on the bookshelf.”
“Well just find it and get rid of it, “ I say.
“No no, you have to do it, I am scared of i. it was so creepy .
“Okay, where did it go?”
And so begins the Great Cockroach Chase.
My wife is a great reader of books so she has an overstuffed bookshelf on her side of the bed plus a desk covered with stuff not yet put away. so I start pulling stuff off her desk to clear the battlefield . Then start pulling the books off one by one, ready with my washcloth to grab it when it came out of hiding. There it is. There it goes. Man, are they fast! It runs behind a bag of socks before I can pounce. The chase is on. I am afraid we are going to lose it and the next thing we will see is thousands of little ones taking over our boat. I admit, it is much faster than I am.
It is time to use my brain. how can I catch it? I need something better than my hands. How about the that house vacuum cleaner that we can’t find a place for on the boat. Yes, I can just ‘Suck-it-up’ with powerful suction. It works. I jam the hose behind the bag and it disappears. Have we got it or not? Cannot see it anywhere. Must be in the vacuum cleaner. Now we have to get it out. I take the machine on deck and take out the filter unit. We can’t see it though the plastic so I open the door to shake our visitor into the ocean it crawls out and I shake it into the water. it seems to swim well but is soon gone with the current. Whew!
We have made a point of rarely tying to a dock while cruising in Samoa in the 1980’s. We tried everything including bug bombs but could not get rid of them until we went back to Canada. Once again in the South Pacific we anchor or tie to mooing buoys to avoid them as well as having more ventilation. Still these big cockroaches about 2-3 inches long seem to fly from land. We have had them land on the boat when on passage 300 miles from any land.
✓ What can one do to avoid getting infested with cockroaches?
✓ Avoid tying up to docks.
✓ Use window and hatch screens.
✓ If one lands aboard, find it and get rid of it.
✓ Spread Borax liberally, especially in galley and eating areas.
✓ Keep the galley counters and floor clean of food crumbs.
✓ Cross your fingers and wear a lucky rabbits foot.
Good luck. It is illegal to carry too many passengers.
This was written by Gary
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