Cockroaches !

A semi-humorous look at the un-speakable problem of coackroaches onboard.... even good people can have them. Stuart of SY Velella writes of the relationship stressing problem of eviction of them in the new TCP, Free to download at www.thecoastalpassage.com from the home page click on "recent editions" and select # 19 the newest edition of the Coastal Passage.

Ah the joys of cruising the tropics! Do you have cockroaches?? You can tell me... I'm known for keeping a secret!!

Cheers

[Talbot]

I have been in a couple of grey funnel liners that were infested with them. Made the mistake once of spraying some anti-roach through a gap used by them above my pillow. damn things were dropping on my pillow for the next 24 hours.

[Pblais]

One way they get aboard is in the cardboard used in almost all product packaging (food especially). The eggs remain active and they hatch when you bring home the sop[plies. Always best to remove all the cardboard packaing when stocking up. You really don't need the extra trash and the cardboard holds mositure but also holds roach eggs.

You don't like to think about it much but it's the way it is. Nasty litle critters are everyplace.

[Pblais]

Are cockroaches and palmetto bugs the same thing?

Basically they are the same thing but more of a South Florida hybrid. Can be a bit bigger, more crunchy when stepped on, don't mind the light, and can fly. They gave them a cute name so they sound less offensive - they are not.

Carribean has most of the same bugs you are used to at home and in the southern US, but you can find odd varieties too. There are places with worse bugs than others, but I'm sure you won't be that home sick for your own bugs. They have large walking sticks. They look like a thin green twig to hide from brds. Harmless but very odd.

They have loud things at night that people think are crickets or something like one but are really tree frogs. One is a deep sound and the other a high pitch almost artificial squeak.

The mosquitos are not as bad as Ontario, but they have them. Most places have cleared out the malaria that used to be common in the 19th century. They have some big garden spiders that could scare the heck out of you, but they are harmless too. Actually most of the really big ones are harmless.

Bottom line I don't think I have been bitten any more than here and I never got a bite that did anything more to me than a small mosquito bite would. Sand flies and the sort of beach stuff you find on the ocean is to be expected in some places during some times of the year. My wife has a lot of allergies too and she never has a problem.

[GordMay]

Rick & Lori
Biting Insects:
Insect Bites and Stings: http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic62.htm
Biting and Stinging Insects: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/TOPIC_Bitin...inging_Insects
Biting Flies: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/scripts/htm...DOCUMENT_IG081
Insect ID: http://www.entomology.wisc.edu/insec...ing/index.html

[JGarrick]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Rick & Lori
Biting Insects:
Insect Bites and Stings...

I should never have clicked any of those links - my skin will be crawling for hours.

[Knottygirlz]

Good grief! I never even thought of the bugs that we might encounter in cruising. It seems like alot of them are not so different than what we encounter now, only with bigger teeth.

Black flies are bad here in the spring, but warmer weather kills them off quickly, so they are only a problem in May and usually not in open water. Deer and horse flies are a bigger pain, but are not that common in our region. We did encounter them last year on the Rideau and I expect that they will be this year as well. Mosiquitos are everywhere. The hot, dry summer last year helped alot though. Spiders and flies seem to be the biggest pests. With spiders I generally take the live and let live approach, seting aside the "ugly" factor. The last couple of years we have had an ever increasing number of them on the boat, but I thought they would take care of the flying pests, so, for the most part they have been allowed to stay. However, I am finding that more and more I am being bitten by spiders, so this year I am going to try to control them with natural deterents and see how that works. Besides, they did not do a very good job keeping the fly population under control last year. I'm not sure if it was just the region, but after only a couple of days on the Rideau we had a major fly problem. In spite of buring coils every night and spraying almost daily, we could not kill these flies, unless we used a rolled up magazine the squish them (YUK!) This year I am trying one of those OFF lanterns to see if that works better. We are a little limited as to what we use because of the cat. Although useless as a pest deterrent, she is kinda cute and pretty good company.

Lori, Rick and Shadow

[CaptainK]

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Dealers

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[Boracay]

The old time proven method of mosquito protection is to make sure that all hatches and windows are screened. A quick spray of flyspray and you have a mosquito fee environment.
I have seen reports that there are some biting insects that will go through normal fly screen so even smaller mesh may be necessary in some places.
Mosquitos transmit so many dangerous and debilitating diseases that it is worth going to the trouble of screening them out.

[GordMay]

Maggie and I were fanatic in keeping cardboard & (most) paper off the boat.
All Cardboard & Grocery Bags were always left at the dock or beach (religiously !!!).
The only paper products aboard were charts, stationary, books (etc) and food wrappings that went directly into the fridge. The books always made me nervous.

I didn’t know that plastic bags could house roach eggs.

We always departed Florida (for Bahamas) with a Gecko aboard. They only eat live prey, and died of starvation within a week or so.

Jeanne's "Cruising Dictionary" is an excellent resource, and not merely a lexicon.

[Pblais]

I didn’t know that plastic bags could house roach eggs.

The only thing I can think of it that the plastic bag warehouse could also be a warehouise with paper products and the roaches come in contact with everything. I think with paper they can get into the pulp when they make the paper and cardboard.

It's the longevity of the eggs that owes the roach it's prolific worldwide terrirtory. North America was devoid of them until after the days of discovery.

[GordMay]

Roach Dust & Asthma:

Roach dust is a very strong asthma trigger, and can remain so for years. Roach dust is made up of roach body parts and droppings. Dead roaches, body parts and droppings become part of the household dust, hence a thorough cleaning is important to get rid of all the roach dust, after you’ve eliminated the roaches.

This rigorous cleaning will also deny roaches some of their food source, and pick up many of the eggs.

A person with asthma should not be in the room being cleaned. The cleaning can stir up the roach dust into the air. If the person with asthma has to do the cleaning, a dust mask may help.

References:

“Least Toxic Methods of Cockroach Control” ~ D. M. Miller and P. G. Koehle
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/IG105

“Cockroaches Management Guidelines” ~ UC IPM
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7467.html

“Cockroach Control Manual” ~ University of Nebraska-Lincoln
http://pested.unl.edu/cocktoc.htm
including:
“Chaper 3 - Cockroach Biology”
http://pested.unl.edu/chapter3.htm

[Brent Swain]

Boric acid sprinkled on shelves kills roaches. A piece of dry ice will be covered by frozen mosquitoes in short time. A bowl of water with a touch of detergent to eliminate the surface tension (which they use to land on) will drown them when they try to land and sink right in. If you put all your screens in, then burn an inch of mosquito coil stuck betweeen the tines of a fork, in your cabin,you'll kill any who have snuck aboard . The screens should let the smell out.
Both roaches and mosquitoes hate the smell of catnip.
Spraying your screens with bug repellent will stop no-seums from landing to crawl thru.
Mosquitoes are the most dangerous animal on the planet ( next to republicans). Mosquito born diseases kill millions of times the number of people that all other animals combined kill.
Brent Swain

Brent, My cat thanks you SHe is such a catnip addict that I can not immagine ever seeing a misquito within 100 feet of the boat. GORD, more information than I ever wanted about bugs It's kind of like asking the ingredients of sausage.

[roverhi]

A funny thing happened on the way to the Ala Wai. We managed to make it all the way through our SoPac cruise without picking up any roaches. That is until we reprovisioned in Papeete for the trip home. Must have picked up some roach eggs 'cause after a few months back in Hawaii, we began to see signs of the critters. About this time, our slip finally came through in the Ala Wai so we took the boat over and left it for a few months. Some friends of friends came through and needed a place to stay on Oahu so we said, "Hey, why not stay on our boat." They jumped on the free place to stay. When they went into the boat, they found the Critters had gone forth and multiplied. They whacked, swatted, and sprayed the roaches till they had a pile of dead bodies on the cabin sole the size of a small mountain. They thought they had gotten all the mobile one's however and finally racked out. One of our main cabin berths had a shelf for the radio on the bulkhead about 2' above the berth. We'd lived with it since we built the boat, usually slept with our feet at that end and never had a problem with it. Our friend decided to reverse the direction of his slumber. In the middle of the night he was snoring away when something crunchy and tickly dropped into his mouth. He jumped up, cracking his head on the radio rack opening up a nasty gash and knocking him out.

After they got back from the Emergency room getting him sutured and checked out for a mild concussion, they bought 3 bug bombs, bombed the boat and then rented a hotel room and finally got some sleep. They never went back to the boat. We were lucky they didn't start the boat on fire with the bombs.

It sure did a job on the roaches, however. We had a solid carpet of roaches on the sole when we went on the boat a week later. Unfortunately, by that time, the roaches had eaten everything, and I mean almost everything on the boat. They ate the bindings on all the books so the pages just fell out, They ate the waterproofing off our foul wx gear, they even ate the paint on the bulkheads. About the only thing they didn't eat was the FRP hull and didn't seem to like varnish all that much. Destructive little bastards when ignored.

Despite the bombs, we were already seeing the beginnings of another infestation. We bombed the boat, again. They came back, so we bombed again and again but just couldn't rid of them. About the best we could do was stay just slightly ahead. We finally had to haul the boat and have it professionally tented at no small cost. Nothing like a little nerve gas to get their attention. That finally got rid of them for good.

Aloha
Peter O.