Ants Marching...

OK, the timing is bad, but this is NOT an April Fools thing (I only wish)...

What's the strangest thing(s) you've ever found in your sail box?

This past weekend, I was taking out my sails to see how they look for the season. The boat hasn't left the yard since the H16 NAs in 2006 (due to new baby), and has been parked under oak trees (except when in the front yard covered in Christmas lights).

Anyway, I got to my spare (old BRU Cat) sails, and the main was completely infested with black (Carpenter?) ants. Not wanting to use bug spray for fear that it would eat through the sail, I spent a good half hour with a shop vac getting rid of them.

I emptied the whole box, but there weren't any ants anywhere else. The new sail bag is zippered, maybe that kept them out?

Anyway, I'm assuming they didn't damage the sail, because I didn't see any holes or anything. Very creepy though...

Mike

You need to stop using wood sails. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Is your sailbox made of wood?

Those aren't necessarily carpenter ants. When I bought my used monohull and removed the rub rail, it was completely infested with those little blank ants.

My RV also had a similar issue but I quickly identified a squished jelly pack in one of the utensil draws, removed and cleaned that drawer thoroughly, and just before I put down ant killer, they completely disappeared.

Make sure there's not a left-over snack bar in the box or something.

A long time ago we bought an old cruising cat, and it had some mahogany trim on it that turned out to be infested with BIG black ants. They had pretty much turned the wood into pulp.

We have also had huge colonies of ants in our sails when they have been stored for a while. I don't know what the attraction is, maybe just a warm place to hang out in the winter?

aw man,

I thought this was gonna be a discussion about the Dave Matthews Band.

Forgot to mention, the box is fiberglass, there was no wood or food in there, and it was pretty dry. There was a cardboard box (holding spare rudders), which was damp, but wasn't showing signs of having been ant lunch.

I do have wood under the box, spanning across the trailer to support the middle of the box, but that is 2-year old PT wood and I'd like to doubt that the ants would be eating that and surviving.

They were the big black ants, the bigger ones were 3/4 inch long. Some of them had a brownish color to their big section (in case we have any bug experts here).

Come on, no poisonous snake stories???

Mike

From your description, and from what I see on the internet, it sounds like carpenter ants. They made your boat box their home, but they actually go out to work every day on trees nearby. Does that sound possible?

Will they mow and trim the lawn too?

OK, so no one wants to share their critter stories...

Anyway Mary, yes the little bastards have killed some trees in our yard. I'm not a tree or bug expert, so I don't even know it until the tree falls, then I see all the ants when I cut up the tree. We live in a pretty wooded area, so we have plenty of trees to spare, but yikes...

Mike

Maybe they wanna go sailin????? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

No snakes so far, but once we found thousands of bees nested inside a H16 hull. This was really dangerous. Final solution: a cork in the drain plug.

I get a lot of **** in my wooden sailbox. It's near the shore, by some trees and underbrush; and I built it with a 1/4" gap on the bottom of the sides for drainage/ventilation. They do like to get into the rolled-up sail. Often as I raise the sail, they'll come raining down on me. I just have to make sure my wife doesn't see them, or she wouldn't come near the boat.

There was a guy who showed up at a regatta at Clearwater with kittens in his H-18 hull. They wouldn't come out, so they went sailing on Saturday. Not sure what happened after that.

I think Dave Carlson is the resident entomologist.

the ants go marching one by one.....

I'm trying to figure out how a kitten would get into an TheMightyHobie18 hull.......

I had a hornets' hive in my trailer tube when i bought the boat. I took the lid off and did a double take when I saw the hornets.....I ran faster than I've ever run in my life.

Cinnamon- ants don't like it - cinnamon is slightly toxic and OK for you in moderate amounts but ants really don't like it- I've used it around the house for years- just a line and they won't cross it - fun to watch in my office as they turn around to avoid it.

No bugs, but every Spring birds try to make nests in the covered engine well of my F-27. Last year I covered the well opening around the outboard lower unit to keep them out - they pecked through the plastic and made a nest anyway... At the end of the season I went to wipe off what looked like a small chunk of tree stuff and saw instead that an owl had horked up an owl pellet on my deck - nice little tight package of bones, feathers and fur from its previous lunch and dinner of varmints. Various species of Vultures pick apart life vests and foot straps and poop on lots of stuff at our club field. They seemed to have moved on a bit in the last years, but they still make their mark.

12 ga! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" />

Carpenter ants are mostly looking for moisture... so the wet cardboard was probably what they were after. They are a great study in random behavior on a massive scale in finding food/water. The scouts travel around laying a scent trail in random patterns around the main nest. When they find food or water, they immediately return to the nest. Eventually enough of them have returned from a consistent source of food or water to the nest to leave a strong trail for others to follow. That probably happened to your sail box and you have the ones that were just there temporarily drinking... kind of like sailors randomly sailing a windward-leeward course and ending up at the bar at night.

To eliminate them, you really must find the main nest. Probably in a nearby LIVE tree... they depend on the tree drawing moisture out of the ground and up the trunk for the nest to survive. If not a tree, find any constant supply of moisture... leaking pipes, downspouts into foundations, etc.

Not a sailbox story, but... Took the boat down to Nags Head, rigged it, wheeled it down to the beach, pulled the wheels, then sat back with the first beer of vacation and started working to replace a valve stem (Roleeze) so I'm not pumping it up all week. Got the tire sitting in my lap. For some reason, I have to get up, and I turn the wheel over as I do. Right inside the spoked hub is a big black widow spider. Maybe she was still too dizzy after her ride down the beach (and 5 hours of interstate) to mess with me, but HER vacation ended right there. We had another black widow crawl out of the drain hole once...

Also borrowed a friend's 16, and mice had wintered and raised a family in his sails. The holes they chewed were pretty small, but the mouse pee was TERRIBLE! Had to wash it twice with lemon-scented dish detergent before the sailmaker would touch it (and I didn't blame him a bit). There was tons of poop in the box, too :-(

Finally, I picked up two TheMightyHobie18 crossbars for a friend, and carried them home 3 hours+. Both had been on the ground, but one was still pretty grungy, so it got strapped on top of the van. Got it home and hit it with the hose, and big red ants started to come out. By the time I quit, I bet I had flushed out several hundred. If that crossbar had been INSIDE the van...

I have had several hornet nests make a home inside my trailer.

Not a trailer box but in the boxed in the rails that actually make up the trailer frame... My repair guy was the one who both noticed and dealt with them after they kept buzzing him while working on my boat... he suggested I fill the opening of the frame with expanding foam. I opted not to.... as i enjoyed seeing them buzzing him (kidding)

Oh yes, hornets can be nasty. Not only will they get in through the frame openings (end of the box rails), they can get in through holes drilled for wires, etc. Of course, if you seal all of that up, they might just build the nests on the underside of the sail box, or the underside of the framing.

I'm sure 99.9% of my problem stems from not using the boat enough. Same sort of issues with the RV, if it sits too long, critters have their way with you.

Mike

Ah yes- 1500 carpenter ants in my 33 year-old Woodie's front crossbar, the one shown here <-. Solution- Garden hose.
Mice in the rolled up H16 sails inside my garage on the sail loft! Result was several holes and terrible amounts of breath-gagging mouse pee. Solution- Garden hose then soap.
5 year old huge colony of Florida Wood roaches, most alive + 3 pounds of roach poop in a newly delivered, rolled up Avon rubber dingy. Solution- Garden hose then soap.
I think I see a pattern here.

Yes, I think I see it too. You're obsessed with a garden hose for some reason...

Mike

Some mice apparently lived in my 6.0 jib - no holes but a nasty big brownish stain that has refused to come out over the years...

Are you SURE that brown stain was due to mice?

Are ya sure the brown stains were in the SAILS ???? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

A couple of years ago I took my kids sailing on my Miracle for a couple of hours. It was only when I got back and almost derigged that I noticed a couple of hornets coming out of the front beam. There was a nest in there. The kids had been playing on the trapeze and the old shock cord had snapped and flipped around in the beam. I don't know why they didn't come out while rigging or sailing or shock cords flailing around. They sure came out and were looking for something to sting when I sprayed insecticide in there. I also discovered a nest just inside the port hole, about an inch from where I put my fingers to tip the boat bows down. Once again no reaction.

John

Well, to be honest - the stains were there when I bought the boat (honest, it's true!), and that's what the seller said. I guess I just didn't want to consider alternatives... <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />