Pumpout tanks are great. I enjoy the fact that they are effectively a capacious extension my lower intestine, and I don't have to worry about them for weeks.
It's like outsourcing constipation.
But when I finally do the pumpout, I'm aware that there's a sludge building up in the bottom of the tank that a simple bucket of water poured into the doesn't shift.
So when I had a pumpout at Willow Wren in Rugby the other week, it was good to see that they use a high-pressure 'squirter' to stick inside the tank and loosen the sludge. It's a simple copper pipe, stuck on the end of the hose and squeezed to a narrowness.
This is a great idea - well done Willow Wren! That's what I call 'added value' to the full £15 pumpout charge. They use it for their hire boats (pictured here), but it's available to private boats too.
So from now on, any pumpout that doesn't include a squirter is deficient.
Unfortunately, when the guy at WW handed me the pipe through the window, the little tap on the end accidentally switched on, and for a second or two I was squirting water around Granny's bathroom like I was attached to a possessed thing.
I didn't know there was a tap on the end, and that second or two seemed like precious seconds longer and I was briefly cursing them before finding the tap (at the point where the guy gent in the picture here is holding it).
Willow Wren's pumpout 'squirter', August 2008