BUG-MAGEDEN II – the interior version

You may remember our first encounter with WAY TOO MANY BUGS on our boat.

Well we are now through round 2….

A few weeks ago at night – Tristan called me into his room to ‘look at someting.’ That something turned out to be TINY white bugs crawling on the back of his door.

So TINY that they looked like specs of saw-dust – except if you watched really closely – they would move from time to time.

I grabbed the bleach spray and began spraying and wiping all of his walls. As I did this we pondered where they might have come from. Tristan, being the observant kid he is, jumped down to check the composting head – just as Ben arrived home from work.

Well…..the composting head – at first glance looked fine. Until you got up REAL close – which is when you realized the the ‘white’ surface was COVERED in these small white bugs. Covered in that I don’t think you could have touched anywhere on the whole unit without squashing hundreds with a single finger.

We had found the source. We then proceeded to spend the next 2 hours trying to erradicate these critters from our boat. 2 nights later – they were still not all gone – but we did make considerable progress.

We bleach sprayed and wiped every surface we found any on. This included all the walls, ceiling, trim, doors and floors in the forward head, Tristan room and 1/2-way into the salon. We removed the entire composting head from the boat and sprayed it with the strongest setting our hose has. Then we sprayed it again an hour later.

We put a heater in the bathroom, and Tristans room and turned them up high, as heat is supposed to dry these bugs out and kill them.

They were sill present the next morning, so we sprinkled talcum powder on every surface in the head, on the walls and ceiling in Tristans room, and all over the whole composting unit (still on the dock).

We were still finding some here and there – but our next approach to killing them required waiting another 2 days. On Friday the overnight temperatures a dropped below freezing, which is also said to kill these bugs.

What are they you may ask? We believe they are Psocids – a harmless (to humans) small mite-like insect that consumes mold. (Hmm, I wonder why they might flourish on a boat?) We think they were dormant in our coconut coir, which we put in the composting head, and because we had let it sit and compost for over 2.montha they were able to hatch and reproduce. We were able to freeze them out on Friday night.

It was a rough week as we loved without an onboard means of using the bathroom. We are greatful to have been at the dock with access to bathrooms and lots of water for cleaning.

Bug magedden 2 is now in the books, and fingers crossed it will be the last!