If YOU Were a Guest on our Expedition Trawler This Would be Your Room! (and sewage stuff)

Working docked in Florida during the summer heat, Billy Swezey and Sierra Groth tackled two major refit jobs aboard their 43-year-old, 76-foot expedition trawler for Tula’s Endless Summer. In the engine room, Billy overhauled the vessel’s sewage plumbing and Type 2 marine sanitation device (MSD) routing. Concurrently, Sierra began a complete transformation of the forward guest stateroom, stripping decades-old carpeting and installing fresh insulation.

The 76-foot vessel, originally built by a commercial shrimp boat company, features four heads across its layout. Operating in tight mechanical spaces, the crew sought to establish complete system redundancy, ensuring waste can be safely processed or redirected whether navigating coastal zones or cruising offshore.

Re-Plumbing the Type 2 MSD and Waste Redundancies

In the engine room, Billy focused on reconfiguring the waste plumbing to connect the forward living quarters to the Type 2 MSD. The system treats waste through a biological digester and a chlorinator before discharge, while also tying into a dedicated rear holding tank with a capacity between 400 and 600 gallons. Previously, only the master head and the pilothouse head were plumbed directly into the MSD. Billy prepared new lines to route all three forward heads through bulkhead shutoff valves into a centralized distribution manifold.

The isolated ball valves allow any individual toilet line to be serviced or blocked without flooding the bilge. Addressing gravity drainage rules, Billy noted that “according to the specs of this MSD, it should only be allowed to gravity drain overboard if it’s 40 in or more above the water line.” Because the bottom of the treatment tank sits merely 6 to 8 inches above the waterline, gravity draining risked backflooding through the hull. To solve this, Billy integrated a new 8-gallon Ronco plastic sump tank below the unit to receive treated effluent and pump it overboard safely.

Installing Schedule 80 PVC Runs in Confined Spaces

Running the discharge plumbing required squeezing behind the MSD unit and atop the main fuel tanks. Working in the cramped space, Billy fitted inch and a half Schedule 80 PVC piping, anchoring the run securely against engine vibration. He placed four dedicated supports along an initial 10-foot span to ensure long-term stability.

Reflecting on the completed pipe run, Billy remarked that “schedule 80 inch and a half. I think this is going to be a really solid system.” To automate the 8-gallon sump without relying on fragile bilge switches prone to failure in chlorinated water, he selected an IP68-rated residential tethered float switch. During bench testing with fresh water, he temporarily wired the pump using spring-loaded WAGO lever connectors. The pump evacuated the tank in under a minute, handling a vertical lift of 7 to 8 feet and a 15-foot horizontal run before exiting overboard.

Stripping and Insulating the Forward Guest Stateroom

Forward in the accommodation space, Sierra dismantled the original guest cabin interior, which featured turquoise walls and dated green carpeting. To preserve every reusable piece of woodwork, she tagged each trim component with blue painter tape and numbers before photographing each wall section. Sierra explained that “there are 60 pieces that I have to remove, remove all the nails from, find somewhere to store, and then eventually go back.”

With the trim cataloged and stored in an adjoining head, Sierra stripped the glued carpeting down to bare fiberglass and plywood. With temperatures reaching about 95° outside, maintaining interior climate control remained a top refit priority. Billy and Sierra cut sheets of inch and a half closed cell foam, gluing the dense insulation directly to the hull sides to regulate cabin temperatures in both tropical cruising grounds and cold-weather voyages.

Cabinet Joinery and the Custom Mattress Installation

After paneling over the hull insulation, Sierra and Billy turned to cabinet joinery and finishing touches. Billy assisted in aligning new cabinet hinges and drilling mounting holes to ensure the doors operated smoothly. The finished space received freshly painted cabinetry, modern hardware, and a refinished wood mirror frame.

Fitting a mattress to the irregular hull curve presented an unexpected logistical challenge. While shaping the custom foam slab, Sierra admitted that “together we accidentally cut it wrong. So, we didn’t cut the mirror image. So, the memory foam part because it’s a very specific shape that we cut out, the memory foam is on the bottom.” The inverted memory foam layer produced a firmer sleeping surface than planned, the completed cabin provided the 76-foot trawler with a fully insulated, comfortable guest quarter ready for upcoming passages.

Expedition Trawler Refit Specifications

Frequently Asked Questions