Fresh Start Project Mayhem left San Diego in May 2001, bound for the South Pacific. As with most boats, we spent countless hours preparing and addressing every aspect of our boat for the voyage. There is an old saying, that we think we just made up, that when you buy a used boat, you also buy the previous owner’s crap. Knowing the potential for disaster with old and dubious plumbing, we performed major refurbishment, replacing all lines, fittings, and even installing a shiny brand new toilet. Unfortunately one tiny-yet-not-at-all-trivial item escaped installation - the vacuum release valve. The entire system functioned perfectly at the dock and on test-runs, but soon after we left for the Marquesas Islands, the toilet vacuumed shut. Now, at sea, far from sensitive eyes and stomachs, it’s not such a bad thing to simply hang your ass over the side - sometimes even getting a saltwater douche. It’s as if the Pacific Ocean is your very own and incredibly large saltwater bidet. Unfortunately, this practice tends to make one lose friends in small anchorages. After landfall in French Polynesia, something had to be done, lest we be completely bereft of friends. So with a quiet sense of desperation, we soon settled on our old laundry detergent bucket as an alternative to pre-dawn elimination. Thus began the phenomena of The Fresh Start. Project Mayhem is a racing design. As such, it lacks some of the privacy features available on more cruising-oriented boats. So what a perfectly appropriate euphemism to be able to grab the bucket, casually voice your need to Start Fresh, and head below, thereby allowing your shipmates to seek sanctum topside. One of the features of a bucket is its mobility. In the evenings, with guests aboard, the bow of Project Mayhem became a quiet place to contemplate a beautiful sunset while contemplating a Fresh Start. Of course you needed to block out the cheers of your fellow shipmates – who have been in the same situation and can commiserate. And hey, they’re only trying to help. But what the hell, you’re Fresh Starting in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. It takes more than a little jeering to ruin the view of, say Makemo in the Tuamotus, or maybe Daniel’s Bay in the Marquesas. Perhaps we should send the bucket to the Survivor television show so they can contemplate their own defilement of the place.

At this point a new problem arose on Project Mayhem: the lack of a guest log. After drinking our last bottle of tequila and chasing it with a can of chipotle peppers, we found a remedy to this problem as well. So began a long-standing Project Mayhem tradition – if you use the Fresh Start bucket, you must sign it. Given instructions for use, a calm quiet place, a large black magic marker, and a roll of environmentally friendly toilet paper, visitors never failed to leave a memorable memento. Unfortunately, such rigorous uses were never intended for the Fresh Start bucket. After months of being put through the paces, Fresh Start began to show considerable wear. A cracked rim led to many a cut butt, to say nothing of the obvious design flaw of its incredible sharpness to begin with. Finally, the old faithful Fresh Start bucket had inconvenienced one too many female guest. So like a sequel to a Japanese horror flick, the Son of Fresh Start was born. While in Tonga, the girls of the Canadian cruising boat Elakha decided that Project Mayhem needed a new, larger, and more comfortable bucket. After initial decoration by the Elakha girls, the Son of Fresh Start spent several days at Mermaid’s – the cruiser’s bar in Neiafu, Tonga, where fellow cruisers and locals got a chance to flex artistic muscle on the new throne. The Son of Fresh Start, with its comfortable rim and formidable diameter, posed some issues concerning our Caucasian Asslessness, but ass good and creative sailors we have overcome this small inconvenience. Perhaps you’re wondering why we never simply installed the vacuum release valve? As luck would have it, nowhere in the entire South Pacific could we find this trivial piece, not in Tahiti, nor in Pago Pago. Only after reaching New Zealand was the search finally successful. After a simple five minute installation, Project Mayhem has a new, functioning head. We still keep the old buckets around just in case. When cruising, there’s enough to take seriously. So have your fun where you can find it, be serious when you have to, and above all, do anything to save your ass.

Originally published in Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine