One of the issues we discovered with Legacy right away was that the aft head didn't work. It would pump out just fine, but not flush with raw water. We just used the forward head until I had the time to tear into it to find out the problem.
The heads in the Catalina 400, at least in my year, were a Wilcox-Crittendon Headmate. This is a typical, cheap, marine toilet. When I opened it up, I found that their is a two-flap valve on the intake side of the pump. Essentially this is a flat piece of rubber, about the size of dual plug electrical outlet, with two flaps cut into it. Attached to these flaps are brass and stainless steel washers to provide weight and rigidity to the flaps. When I took it apart, these washers fell out of the housing. The rivet holding them on had corroded completely away.
I picked up a Refurbishing kit for the head from Fisheries Supply in Seattle. This kit, about $75, contains various seals, springs, and pistons for the head. The only part I needed was this dual flapper valved. Next time, I'm going to see if I can get that part alone from Wilcox-Crittendon. I took the head apart, greased up the parts with Super Lube, replaced the one part, and the head works fine.
Unfortunately, I think it is just a matter of time before that part rusts away again. With the way the head is setup, there is no way to flush the head with fresh water, which would reduce the rust significantly. On Vision, our Catalina 36, my Dad had plumbed the head so the head intake shared the line with the sink drain. The advantage was that after using the boat, you could then close the intake through-hull, and run fresh water in the sink using that fresh water to then flush the head. This resulted in only fresh water being left in the pump assembly, as well as the discharge lines between the head and the holding tank. This cuts down on odors significantly.
Looking at the heads, I could do this pretty easily in the forward head, as all the fittings are located together under the head sink. However in the aft head, the head intake is in a separate compartment from the sink plumbing and there isn't any good way to join them. I'll have to give that some thought.
Speaking of heads, we emptied both holding tanks on Sunday. On the 400, each Waste outlet is on a different side of the boat, making it less than convenient to empty both tanks. However, we managed without too much of a mess. Unfortunately, the city dock that has the pump-out only has it available from April through October, meaning we'll have to find another location, not nearly as convenient, for the winter months.
Finally. Since we put Legacy in the water, we had not put fuel in it. The fuel gauge still read "Full" but according to some other 400 owners, this gauge can be unreliable. We had put only 8 hours on the engine since we put it in the water (in 2 weeks of ownership we put 4% of the total engine hours on this 5 year old boat). When we filled up the diesel tank, it took 7.7 gallons. Typically, fuel consumption for these is about 1 gal/hr. When Legacy was shipped, her fuel tank was essentially full!
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