Silverfish and Roaches

Do you remove all purchases from their boxes while still on the dock before loading things onto the boat? One couple I met unload everything and do not transfer boxes from store-to-dock-to-boat. e.g.- a case of canned goods will be removed can at a time and loaded into a clean plastic tub before loading onto boat. They say it's to keep control over silverfish and roaches.

This works but is less needed in 1sr world shopping. 3rd world , very worthwhile.

Back in the day it was common on sailboats to dip the canned goods in old varnish , label and all to ID cans and keep them from rusting.

We are in FL , land of Bugs and Drugs , so as a precaution, would lock up tight and use a bug bomb or 3 before leaving for months . After a day the ventilation would be restored. No problems.

Not many silverfish or roaches on the great Lakes but my wife sure hates hem when they do appear.

We have spiders though, lots of spiders! We spray, make our own deterrent, sweep, etc. Still a hassle.

pete

When we took delivery of our then brand new boat, I was determined not to let a single stow away bug aboard. To that end, I insisted that everything coming aboard be removed from cardboard boxes or other secondary packaging. My wife sort of scoffed at the idea, so I told her a little story (fib) about how the International Space Station had become overrun by cockroaches because the Russians failed to practice that same hygene. My young daughters were listening and that made an impression on them, at least.

As luck would have it, a few days later my wife was assisting with one of my daughter's field trips to the Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL). While there, they viewed exhibits of the ISS and received a little lecture about it, after which it was opened up to Q&A. My wife asked, very innocently and sincerely, whether the cockroach problem had ever been resolved. The tour guy said he knew nothing about that, so my wife shared the details about the Russian's being to blame due to their poor hygiene. The tour guy said that was the kind of thing that is generally kept quiet, but that he would try to find out.

When my wife told me the story, I fessed up. But, we have never seen either a silverfish or a roach on board. Hope I am not jinxing myself.

mytraveler said:

when we took delivery of our then brand new boat, i was determined not to let a single stow away bug aboard. To that end, i insisted that everything coming aboard be removed from cardboard boxes or other secondary packaging. My wife sort of scoffed at the idea, so i told her a little story (fib) about how the international space station had become overrun by cockroaches because the russians failed to practice that same hygene. My young daughters were listening and that made an impression on them, at least.

As luck would have it, a few days later my wife was assisting with one of my daughter's field trips to the jet propulsion labs (jpl). While there, they viewed exhibits of the iss and received a little lecture about it, after which it was opened up to q&a. My wife asked, very innocently and sincerely, whether the cockroach problem had ever been resolved. The tour guy said he knew nothing about that, so my wife shared the details about the russian's being to blame due to their poor hygiene. The tour guy said that was the kind of thing that is generally kept quiet, but that he would try to find out.

When my wife told me the story, i fessed up. But, we have never seen either a silverfish or a roach on board. Hope i am not jinxing myself.

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best story ever!

I don't unload groceries, everything comes on board, however, we often shop with out own bags.
For bugs I occasionally spray with Permethrin, use it in the house, garage, hangar, cars, boats, wherever......


and spray on everything, except food. Wet, it's toxic, dry, it's fine. And it can be used to make bug proof clothing.


Just don't spray on metal, it will corrode, fast.


Does a good job of getting rid of pests, and usually kills them or scares them away.

I did this religiously in the tropics. No cardboard especially , but also no other outer packaging - plus wash incoming produce with a mild bleach water solution.

It served a double purpose as it was difficult to stow or dispose of packaging/extra trash.

In the northern US, it's more just for the latter reasons.

How do you find everything after removing all the labelling? After provisioning enough for a big trip to the problem areas, I would be forever sorting through near identical cans to find the beef soup. Hand written labels would help a little but wouldn't be nearly as visual as the printed labels.

GoneDiving said:

How do you find everything after removing all the labelling?

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For cans we used a permanent sharpie and wrote the item name and date purchased, and sometimes added a little drawing (of a peach or whatever). As it happened, we stowed cans with the top facing up and not the side, so regular labeled cans you couldn't see the labels anyway.

For packaged items that had an outer "cardboard" box and then an inner bag, we would sometimes just cut out a small section of the box to keep with it - that could also include instructions for something like a mix or whatever.

Then too, we'd put veggies separate from fruit, baking supplies all together, etc. So that was another clue.

It sounds like a lot of work, but I guess it didn't seem that bad because when doing a big provisioning, even if you weren't doing that part, it was still a giant mountain of stuff to buy, get back to the boat, stow, maybe add it to a list (if one is kept), etc. So taking a minute to write on it was no big addition. Also, having the date purchased was helpful (nowadays some [all?] cans have dates on them though).

PS: An additional motivating factor: I crewed on a boat once where they were not so careful about these things. Lying in the bunk on your offwatch and having cockroaches crawl across you (or turning on the galley light to see them scuttling away) was NOT my idea of fun. Somehow being "trapped" at sea with them seemed even worse than having them on land!

We have not removed cardboard for bugs but we have done it to conserve space in the chest freezer. By throwing away all the cardboard packing we were able to get between 30 to 40% more in the freezer. For microwaveable foods we cut out the directions of each type of food and kept it for reference when cooking to know how long to nuke it.

Back in the days of widespread paper bags, the paper bags from the grocery store was a very common way to get roaches into your house. They liked to lay their eggs in the folds of the bags. In a pinch, the roaches could even eat the paper. People would empty the bags and then put the away in a closet or cupboard to reuse later. Cockroach heaven!

The production and packaging of plastic grocery bags probably help prevent this in addition to the plastic bags being a worse medium for growing cockroaches.

I'm sure that cockroaches are fine laying eggs on cardboard and I bet food packaging factories have roaches crawling all over the place looking for tidbits.

Just a note for folks visiting FL.


There are NO roaches in FL, there called Palmetto Bugs.

We did this when we were on our sailboat in the Caribbean. However, I haven't done it in the States on either our sailboat or now, our trawler. Never had a problem with bugs on either boat.

FF said:

Just a note for folks visiting FL.


There are NO roaches in FL, there called Palmetto Bugs.

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The FLORIDA WOODS COCKROACH IS also called Palmetto Bug....same thing !
What do you call the German cockroach that lives in Florida?Wienerschnitzel Bug?

It is a public relations issue. Call them palmetto bugs instead of cockroaches and it doesn’t sound as bad. However we lived in Florida back in the 70s and the palmetto bugs were absolutely just as disgusting as the cockroaches.

Folks in a marina we stayed at in Mexico went to far as to take off their clothes before getting back on board after visiting a boat that was suspected of having roaches. Sometimes not a pretty sight.
We got a bad case and had to move off and totally empty the boat so it could be fumigated. After that we got very careful.

phillippeterson said:

Do you remove all purchases from their boxes while still on the dock before loading things onto the boat? One couple I met unload everything and do not transfer boxes from store-to-dock-to-boat. e.g.- a case of canned goods will be removed can at a time and loaded into a clean plastic tub before loading onto boat. They say it's to keep control over silverfish and roaches.

Click to expand...

When we loaded stores in the US Navy, all cardboard boxes were immediately removed from the ship as it was always assumed road eggs were contained in them.

Whenever I suspected bugs had achieved some sort of living arrangement aboard my trawler here in Florida, I used Raid Max dry foggers (aerosol foggers are a mess) to run them off. I once used them to run a rat or mouse off the boat - better to let it escape the unpleasant fog than kill and and put up with possible odiferous after effects.

The Admiral and I back in 1991 were backpacking around the world and got to the Galapagos for a one week low budget trawler tour. Got on board our 45 ft trawler named Lobo del Mar with 6 other pax. The small up and down cabin we had reeked of Black Flag insecticide, for good reason as we found out while trying to sleep. Cockroaches the size of rats (oK maybe mice) got real busy at night and danced on our bodies. We took to sleeping on the foredeck under the stars and renamed the vessel Cucaracha del Mar!

Comodave said:

We have not removed cardboard for bugs but we have done it to conserve space in the chest freezer. By throwing away all the cardboard packing we were able to get between 30 to 40% more in the freezer. For microwaveable foods we cut out the directions of each type of food and kept it for reference when cooking to know how long to nuke it.

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not onboard a boat...but my wife loves to depackage stuff like that. It absolutely drives me nuts! Generally thinks are so much more easy to organize in the package, and you can tell what it is, read directions, know which one you liked so you can buy it again, etc....

phillippeterson said:

Do you remove all purchases from their boxes while still on the dock before loading things onto the boat? One couple I met unload everything and do not transfer boxes from store-to-dock-to-boat. e.g.- a case of canned goods will be removed can at a time and loaded into a clean plastic tub before loading onto boat. They say it's to keep control over silverfish and roaches.

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My wife formerly worked at a corrugated box company; critters were commonly found in the corrugations of the raw board stock- particularly certain types of roaches.

Wifey B: We don't bring any corrugated boxes on board, but most of the time we have none that we'd even have to choose or not. As to specific item packaging, we tend to keep it intact. We don't remove labels from cans either.

I have known other boaters to get infestations on vegetables they purchased at a farmers' market. I'd be very careful on those.

I'm the only pest allowed aboard.

add: All our meats, etc. are vacuum sealed for our boat freezer.

I guess the only stupid question is the unasked one so here goes:. What's wrong with the odd spray with insecticide? ?

I can understand not wanting to live in a fume cupboard but people seem to be going to extrodinary lengths for something that could be solved with a monthly light spray if and when required

Clearly I'm missing something.

Cheers

GoneDiving said:

I guess the only stupid question is the unasked one so here goes:. What's wrong with the odd spray with insecticide? ?

I can understand not wanting to live in a fume cupboard but people seem to be going to extrodinary lengths for something that could be solved with a monthly light spray if and when required

Clearly I'm missing something.

Cheers

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Wifey B: No, but corrugated boxes can lead to major infestations that a light monthly spray won't resolve. Won't generally happen but can. I don't go to extraordinary lengths, just don't like corrugated.

Frosty said:

I did this religiously in the tropics. No cardboard especially , but also no other outer packaging - plus wash incoming produce with a mild bleach water solution.

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Very good idea Frosty, to “disinfect” local produce in a very light bleach solution. There is also a commercial solution (iodine based if I recall correctly) that we used when living in Syria, since the farmers used human fertilizer.

GoneDiving said:

I guess the only stupid question is the unasked one so here goes:. What's wrong with the odd spray with insecticide? ?

I can understand not wanting to live in a fume cupboard but people seem to be going to extrodinary lengths for something that could be solved with a monthly light spray if and when required

Clearly I'm missing something.

Cheers

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I've been thinking along similar lines while watching this discussion....
don't even really need to do it monthly.... a lot of the readily available stuff will continue to work for quite a long time....

Wifey B: In a reusable world.

Note I didn't say recycling. Recycling you have fresh and new. However, there's now a lot of stuff being reused. People reusing bags for groceries, bags contaminated by bacteria. Grocery boxes reused with Costco the worst if you get delivery by Instacart and you get stuff in a soiled produce box with bugs and even worms, imported all the way from Guatemala. Movers offer discounts on reused boxes and customers get a great deal on fleas and bedbugs.

The best way to deal is not to kill what gets in after but prevent it from getting on your boat or in your house or in your business. We get boxes of items to sell in stores that left Vietnam or Italy weeks ago and were on container ships. We are very careful. We resell used furniture. Spend huge money treating it all before ever letting it in the store.

We don't go to the lengths of removing every item from it's package but we sure aren't bringing corrugated boxes of unknown origin onto a boat to introduce who knows what aboard and we're sure super careful with any produce purchased anywhere.

Here we've seen people talk about purchasing produce in other countries and farmers' markets but I might point out that the grocery I've seen more recalls from than any other for Salmonella and Listeria is Whole Foods and both of those are so easy to spread.

Take reasonable precautions but each must decide what that is. To me, it's too things, boxes and produce. Then it's proper storage.

And best item you can have for storage is a vacuum sealer. Oh, I love those things.

We also thought that a spray with some bug killer would solve the problem. We keep our boat clean and watch for bugs, but once they got on board in a tropical climate NOTHING but a professional fumigation could get rid of them. We hated to empty the boat and move off. We hated to use the strong chemicals to solve the problem. Stopping them from getting on board is the easiest. Nothing is guaranteed to work.

GoneDiving said:

I guess the only stupid question is the unasked one so here goes:. What's wrong with the odd spray with insecticide? ?... people seem to be going to extrodinary lengths for something that could be solved with a monthly light spray if and when required

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I guess a few reasons I can think of. (Can't prove a light spray wouldn't work though, because our efforts were put towards not getting cockroaches in the first place.)

1) Boats are FILLED with cracks and crevices compared to houses (which the light sprays are assuming you live in). Compare a square room (maybe a few cracks at the baseboards) with a boat. Odd shaped cracks and crevices everywhere, tons of places you can't get to (behind the fuel tanks), etc. Great for the roaches, but I would think a nightmare for getting rid of them (with a casual spray).

2) This would not always apply, but oftentimes on a boat you don't have access to tons of water, laundry machines, spare rooms to move stuff to while you spray, etc. I know some here DO have those things, but some don't. I picture trying to get rid of roaches on my typical type of boat, and it's tons of crevices, no big linoleum covered laundry room, no way to live in "another wing" while making one toxic, etc. Also, you may be trying to clean toxic sprays off of varnished teak or .... out of instruments?

I know that sometimes it's possible to get them even if you are careful (some FLY onto your boat), but I can't imagine not trying my best to avoid them if at all possible (that's just me though).

I'm no expert but all of that seems to presuppose that the spray must actually hit the bug.

While probably true for some kinds, a lot of this stuff just has to cover the places where a bug will come walking by later..... even many months later. That's why exterminators spray along baseboards, pipes, etc.... anywhere that a bug might use as a walkway.

Then maybe it's okay to get them first and eradicate after. I was too chicken to try, so put my efforts into avoidance.

Now that I think about it, I did re-join a boat in Central America once that I had spent some time away from. While I was gone they were more casual and so we had the joy of cockroaches at sea on the first passage after that. We were not able to eradicate them -- of course when cruising you don't have access to all products. This was many years ago but I do remember trying a white powder poison that you rolled into balls of sweetened condensed milk -- might have been boric acid powder? --- store owners were making sure we English speakers knew it was poison and not sugar (was labeled in Spanish). I remember we tried a few other things but can't remember the details. None of them worked tho.

What finally did the trick was leaving the boat on the hard over the following winter. Not always convenient depending on location and plans.

Living with roaches aboard was very un-fun.