The downside of storing your boat on the hard is that critters can easily come aboard and stowaway if they so desire. The yard in Trinidad had some ants that we noticed when we dropped the boat off but they paced some plastic between the lumber the boat was sitting on and the boat but I guess that’s not enough.
We had lots of tiny black sugar type ants on board and we tried all kinds of things to get rid of them on our trip, sprays, powders, etc. Every store we went in we looked for a fumigator or bug bomb without any luck. One night we had a decent Internet connection so I consulted the almighty oracle that is google and found some interesting ideas.
Mixing sugar and boric acid seemed to be a good option and we had both of those on board already. The two powders together didn’t do much so I put some water in there and made a syrup and in no time those little (pests) came out and devoured their little ant cocktail.
2 days later all peace was restored on board. The only problem was that we put up with those little (pests) for 2 weeks before we found a solution that worked.
Pests is in parenthesis because the real explicative used might not be appropriate here.
I was so inclined yesterday when I found a couple when cleaning that I mixed a fresh cocktail and placed it in one of the cockpit storage area just for good measure and since the adults were having their own cocktails, I figured if there any ants left they too should enjoy a cocktail.