What's That Smell???

People will tell you that a variety of smells come with a boat. We can attest that this is very true. We've been learning about a lot of odors lately. Take the bilges for example. After they did the repairs, the bilges had some water left in them. Needless to say, after a while, they started to stink. Now the wife is somewhat sensitive to odors. Her olfactory senses are, shall we say, way above average. Those senses get even more heightened when she has a migraine coming on. Sometimes, an odor can actually give her a migraine. So, picture if you will, her donning rubber gloves, cleaners, and sponges and going after those bilges. When the starboard holding tank cracked, she was the first to detect an odor. Let's just say it also didn't take her long to find the source. Now boats live in warm damp environments. So, as with any object in such an environment, mildew can tend to appear overnight. We have employed various methods to scrub away and kill the mildew. We even joked of making a science project out of the salon ceiling. We could divide it into multiple areas and figure out which method of removal worked best!

This past week has been especially trying in the odor department. The wife detected the smell days ago. The rest of us (being without such heightened senses), of course took a little longer to smell what she smelled. She's been going crazy trying to find the elusive odor. They will tell you, that when trying to track down an odor, to let your nose do the work for you. My wife did that very thing. She set about sniffing every nook and cranny of the boat trying to find the source of the odor. She even resorted to sniffing the rest of our actual persons! To no avail, we couldn't find the source. Now the rest of us could somewhat smell the odor. But my wife could smell it very strongly. So strongly that she was certain it was fungal of some sort.

She resorted to hand scrubbing and then disinfecting the floors. She cleaned the seats in the salon. She cleaned everything from top to bottom. She would go outside for awhile, then come back in. Immediately she could still smell it. She was certain she was beginning to go a little crazy (and, while we didn't say anything, the thought had also crossed our minds at one point or another). Finally she gave up looking and decided to try again tomorrow. She decided to set about clearing the table for dinner (quite despondent).

She came across a pile of things that needed to be placed elsewhere, and began looking around the salon shelves for a place to put them. Her eyes fell onto two grocery bags that had been tied and set on the shelves almost two weeks ago. Now, you know that mom voice right? The one you hear, with your name attached to it, that means get your butt in there immediately or you might not live to your next birthday? That voice emanated out of my wife with our son's name attached to it. He immediately popped up out of his hull and says, "Yea mom?" My wife says, "Is that your biology project sitting over there on those shelves?" The boy sheepishly replies, "Yea." My wife responds with a clipped voice, "The project that you completed almost two weeks ago on the effects of ethylene?" The boy hesitantly states, "Yes." My wife (with that deadly calm you dare not argue with) says: "Take them out now. Right now. All the way out to the trash on the dock, away from this boat. That's probably what I'm smelling." The boy (with a small hesitant chuckle) quickly grabbed the bags and removed them from the area. As he walked out the door with them, my wife immediately exclaims that yes, that is indeed the odor.

Now for those of you that don't know about an experiment involving the effects of ethylene: Ethylene is the chemical that is produced by ripening fruit. The more ethylene you can capture in the fruit's vicinity, the faster it ripens. The bags were full of bananas and apples that had been used for the experiment. Needless to say the experiment had long since been completed, and then forgotten about on the shelf. The ethylene had long since done it's job and the fruit was more of a black gooey blob that had left the bag and was beginning to roam the shelf. My wife is happy that we have finally found the culprit, and the boy will be getting a lesson in not forgetting such things (as he will be the one cleaning the fungus on the shelf)!