Critters and Bugs on Board.
Every region has it own kind of bugs. I don’t mind bugs so much, if they don’t sting, but actually, I would to keep all bugs our of and off the boat.
One obvious solution are bug screens. Bug screens are not created equal and are very important when cruising the tropics. It is also important what size the screen holes are, because the noseeums in Mexico are tiny and go right through most screens. A dock neighbor, who had spent several years cruising Mexico, handed us a bag with very fine screening material. Lucky us, because now we made it into screens for the companion way and v-berth hatch. We will also add it as a lining to the bug screen enclosure we have over the cockpit, which is not fine enough for noseeums.
A cruising friend hangs a solar light on the backstay at night to attract any night flying and biting insects and keeps her cabin free of them that way. Will try that too.
In arid areas, like the land surrounding the Sea of Cortez, bees travel far to find fresh water. They will also find your boat. We heard from a fellow cruiser that he mopped of the solar panels in an anchorage with fresh water and within half an hour the mob was swarmed by bees. Only after he threw saltwater on the panels and decks and the bees left.
Other cruisers told us to put out water on the bow for the bees. I thought that this wouldn’t help but exasperate the problem by not letting the bees move on to a better, permanent source of fresh water. But I was wrong, we put fresh water in a bowl on the bow and the bees left us alone. The bees sent two or three of their scouter bees to the cockpit to alert us when the bowl was empty and needed refilling. It’s a little tricky to lift the anchor with bees swarming over the bow, best to do it before sunrise or move the bowl to another spot mid-deck and wait for them to move there.
Again, bring very fine screens, light clothing, bug spray or lotion and anti-sting and post-sting medicine and specialized ones if you’re allergic or don’t know if you are.
Don’t bring any cardboard on board of any kind and take off the labels off cans. Critters like cockroaches lay their eggs in them way back in the supermarket warehouse and they will then hatch in your boat. Be diligent.
In all bulk foods like grains and rice are tiny bug eggs. Someone advised us to microwave the goods prior to bringing them on board or putting them in a plastic bag and baking the bag in the sun for several hours.
Larger critters like mice can come aboard your dock lines and anchor chain. I saw people cutting out a circle of some cardboard, cut a slit half way and put that over their lines. But some critters are resourceful and climb over it. I recently saw a big fat land cockroach (2″/6cm) climbing from the dock onto the fender and was on her way onto our boat! An hour later we had laid down a thin line of anti critter powder on the dock alongside our boat.
People make all kind of traps to put in their boats, but they all involve a poison like boric acid and something the critter likes like sugar and a liquid to make a paste. Put traps out in the bilge and wait.
We found some roaches on board (small, less then 1″/3cm), we don’t want to live with and I made recently a pretty nice toxic concoction out of peanut butter and boric acid for cockroaches, which my friend Debbie from Coastal Drifter taught me. I put on gloves and mixed 2 small bags of boric acid (available in local pharmacies) with one big tablespoon of sweet peanut butter, just enough to make a sticky ‘dough’. I had cut skinny cans down to 1-2 inches high in which I placed a quarter sized dollop of the deadly dough and folded the sides over to meet in the middle, looked kinda like little boats. I put the boats in small bags, so that the stuff doesn’t get on everything in case they fly around in the boat and bilge, but cellophane wrap would do too with openings for the critters to get in. I placed them in the bilges from bow to stern. Let’s see what will happen! Or better if they will be around any longer…
Good luck and check back here.
I will add more info as we go along.
