Following on from the blog reviewing our winter in the river, springtime in the Rio Guadiana was relatively short. The frosty, cold days of winter were soon forgotten, as daytime temperatures in April hovered around the low 20s centigrade. Then in the first week of May, they shot up to almost 30C. Other than a few cloudy days when a north wind blew strongly, the majority of days have remained warm with only a few drops of rain.

From Easter onwards, as Covid infection numbers fell, Portugal began an easing of restrictions. We could once again meet up with friends in a bar or cafe, albeit in small numbers per table. Life felt like it was beginning to return to a little to normal.

There was still one major boat repair that we wanted to get finished before the summer. The galley cupboard had been suffering from damp recently, and we wanted to find out what was going on.

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I'm convinced boat toilets were designed to make sure boat owners could never be too happy and relaxed. It's a rare one I'm sure that has never suffered a blockage, critical part failure, or had holding tank issues. And most likely these failures occurred at the most inconvenient time. Cue a nasty, smelly time to resolve the issue.

In 2015 after several unscheduled toilet fails, we'd begun to think about replacing our sea-water flushing toilet with a composting/waterless toilet. This year, we finally bit the bullet and completed the job. In this article, we review our experiences with a standard boat toilet and the questions we had when it came to changing to composting. We then take you through the build and conclude with our verdict after two months of use.

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It's mid-April and as I write this, the sky outside is grey, with a forecast for showers later. However, despite the clouds, the air temperature is around 20°C. In fact on many days over the last few weeks, the daytime temperature has reached close to the mid-20s centigrade, so I can confidently declare the chilly days of winter to have passed.

For the second part of our review of our winter afloat in the Rio Guadiana, we look at the good and bad points and ask "would we do it again?"

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