Unwanted Guests

It feels so flippin good to be home. Unpacking…..is sooo good. We’ve been living out of a backpack for 4 months!! We are reveling in the nesting process. Also wonderful to be floating again. Every once in a while I think to myself “Are we moving?” And yes we are.

So far everything seems to be going to plan….except for one tiny problem….our new houseguests!! When we store the boat for the season we always leave a few bug traps out preventively. In all our years of sailing we’ve only ever had an ant problem but this time when I checked the sticky traps I found 3 dead German cockroaches! Give me big seas and bad weather any day over a cockroach. It became my mission prior to moving back onboard to exterminate these unwanted guests. First step was a deep clean. Opening all the bilges and moping everything out and looking for traces. I found nothing. I was beginning to wonder if maybe these 3 dead roaches were from early in the summer and there were no others. Unfortunately this was not the case as Graham sent me a video of a live cockroach caught on a sticky trap the next morning.

I went deep in my internet research and spent so much time at the hardware store that morning reading all the product. The stock boys must of thought I had an army of cockroaches at home. I came back to the boat armed with 4 different products!

1. Foggers: you basically close all the window, set them off and leave your boat, not to
   return for at least 4 hours.
2. Boric acid: it’s a powder that you sprinkle along the base of all walls, cracks and crevices
3. Baited Roach Traps: the cockroaches are attracted to the poisoned bait and take it back to the others
4. Sticky Roach Traps: these give us a visual queue if we still have cockroaches

Well Graham was the lucky winner of setting off the foggers. We did this on two different nights in different areas of the boat. We opened all our cupboards and floorboards so the fumes would go everywhere. Set them off and got the hell out.

I dusted everywhere with boric acid and laid out all the traps. We felt very pleased with ourselves. I spent a bunch of time the next day wiping down the boat and cleaning after the foggers. We kept checking traps and no roaches. We did it!….or did we??

We moved back on board and began the nesting process and periodically I’d check the traps happy to see no new guests…..until yesterday afternoon. Arrrrggg. Another live one caught on a trap. Now granted it had only been a day since the last treatment and the products say it may take a few days for them to be totally eradicated so I haven’t gone into full freak mode but I am obsessively checking the traps constantly.

Fingers crossed we have given these guests the boot! I'll keep ya updated :-).