cockroaches - how frightened should I be?

tudorsailor

tudorsailor

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I was reading a blog of a liveaboard and noted that they washed all fruit and veg before taking on board. I also know that one is not meant to bring cardboard boxes on board from a supermarket

I do wonder how likely it is that one can get cockroaches from unwashed fruit and veg? Why stop there? Why not wash the cereal box that was also in car board boxes? What about the butter packs etc

Should I worried food bought at open markets more than supermarkets?

TudorSailor
 
South of La Rochelle (46°N) Cockroaches become progressively worse as a problem.

Once you have them onboard, they can be difficult to eradicate.

Their eggs can even be laid under the labels on tinned food.

No cardboard or paper from anything food related. Decant everything packaged in cardboard into plastic storage containers with snap lids.

Tinned food needs labeling with an indelible chunky felt tip pen, including the use by date if you are finickity?

If you buy food from market stalls and the like in hot countries, Morocco, Canaries, Cap Verde, Tunisia, their is a very high risk of cockroaches.

On the plus side, if you find cockroaches, then in means you don't have rats
 
The Wee Beasties....

I had cockroaches.....
I was based in Malta for 5 years when a little 'roach went for a walk over my pillow - Mrs was not impressed to say the least.
The next week was spent in what I can only say was paranoid activity.
Every idea I tried was thwarted by a very persistant ever growing population, one idea was to hose the interior out - yeh I was desperate by now.
TOTAL WASTE OF TIME AND EFFORT.

It felt like I had leprosy as no-one openly talked about it, then I tentatively asked a neighbour (I didn't really want to mention it in case they banished me as unclean).
The answer came 'Oh you have them, we have had them 3 times and so have all our friends at sometime.'

Simply called the local pest controller company they charged £80, it took them 6 hours to place tiny spots of poison everywhere, and I mean everywhere.
They were all dead within 24hours. For the said £80 I received a 12 month guarantee.

Moral to the tale...
If you think you have cockroaches, call the experts and pay the man. It's well worth it.
 
Markets etc are much cleaner these days,I have lived in Spain a good while and have not seen one yet,we certainly dont bring them back from the market or the super...we have field mice.
 
The worst type of cardboard is the corrugated type, they lay their eggs in the holes and seams. Other types of cardboard or paper are much less likely, but note that the egg site can be anywhere, not necessarily food related.

The reason for washing fruit is not so much that it may harbour eggs, more that it may have been walked on.

Another tip is to remove your shoes on deck, and if you have stamped on a roach, clean them.
 
You should be worried if you are in the Tropics or sub-Tropics. An infestation is not good.
We wash everything with a weak solution of bleach and no cardboard goes below. For example, the bleach solution is in a bowl and tins are rolled in it, tetra paks are wiped and special attention is given to where there are folds. Cereal is usually in 'waxed' paper inside a cardboard box, so the cardboard box is discarded. Absolutely everything is wiped or washed, with all fruit and vegetables being dunked and then dried before being stored. It does not take much time, but then as cruisers we are time-rich.

So far we have had one cockroach on the side deck that came aboard with some meat in a cardboard box and one in the dinghy. Both were flicked into the water.

In addition, we dunk the solesof shoes and sandals in the water before stepping aboard from the dinghy, as it's possible to have trodden on eggs and be carrying them on the soles of footwear. It's not paranoia, just common sense.
 
In the main you get two types of cockroaches, the very small and the very large; the latter have wings. In the old days, sailors used to introduce to the ships large cockroaches so they can feast on the small ones; perhaps it was better to have a few hundred big cockroaches than a few thousand small ones. I dislike them enormously
 
After years of taking every precaution, successfully, we became more careless about taking packaging aboard and four years ago in Cuba picked up a dose. Embarrassingly, the first appeared at the very moment I was boasting to a guest that we'd never had them.

They may be quite harmless but, as Martyn78 says, they provoke you to extreme measures. I would get up in the middle of the night, turn the galley lights on suddenly and squash them as they dashed for cover. The worst time was getting four at once. But when we reached Florida and really effective cockroach treatments, we cleared them in less than a month and have never seen one aboard since.

Yes, in the tropics don't think supermarkets are safe. A hazard to expect if you disturb the boxes at the back of the shelf. I remember one supermarket in French Polynesia where they were scuttling everywhere. The locals were stepping daintily around them on the floor, and blowing them off the produce. I stamped on a couple to greatly disapproving frowns.
 
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Until a year or so back, we owned a flat near Cadiz in Spain. It was a new build of twelve apartments when we bought it. Within months every flat had cockroaches. All the other owners / residents (ours was a holiday home, we didn't live there) were Spanish and totally uninterested. They expected them to be there. We set traps and caught many but we could always rely on seeing one or two during our stays there. They were quite big. We didn't grow to like them in our eight years of ownership and I would certainly want to get rid if on my boat.

Do as suggested, get a man in.
 
Just to expand on this interesting subject I thought I would explain the different types found in the UK and warmer climes.

The German and Oriental version are most common in restauarants and laundries etc. They run like mad and breed like mad.

The largest found in the UK and elsewhere is the American (as you might expect!) It is slow moving and I can remember in my days as an Environmental Health Officer when I was inspecting a first aid box of a local bakery when an american cockroach crawled out of an unsealed dressing! I recently stepped on one when passing outside a nice restaurant in Majorca.

The largest and slowest moving is the Madagascan Hissing Cockroach not usually found in the UK outside of Zoos - unless you know different of course!
 
Their is more chance of them flying in. I found that even flushing out a roach on deck down a drain hole would be enough, but then I thought I have roach spray for a reason. I thought the roach was well gone but I sprayed the stuff down the hole and within seconds got a fright with one running down the deck to a death moments later, that was in St Lucia.

We remove all cardboard which included cereal boxes, in short I hate shopping for usual food so I buy stuff that is easy. Monster Energy drinks :-) (Joke)
 
Egg cartons are ALWAYS infected. They get recycled and while in store on the farm get very egg ridden (ops, yes they get loaded with chicken eggs but also cockroach eggs). Though here in Panama in the local Chinese minimart I found a live cockroach between two 36 egg trays in the middle of the day.

Washing fruit in mild bleach gets rid of bacteria, so hopefully both fruit and you will keep longer, but more important gets rid of the mini ants.

Also re big flying ones, good reason to keep mosie net over hatches during the day. We have found two hitting our net over the main hatch.
 
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Good morning:

For those who are concerned/paranoid about cockroaches, I suggest you investigate Goliath Gel which is made by Novartis.

A friend of mine obtained some in the middle east and one use got rid of them immediately after I had suffered from them on and off for 10 years.

I don't know how it works but work it does. Instructions advise to place one small drop throughout the space for each cubic meter of space. No noticeable odor but the roaches disappeared overnight.

It is expensive but works - I have not seen one on board since using it in 2002.

Cheers

Squeaky
 
tudorsailor said:
I was reading a blog of a liveaboard and noted that they washed all fruit and veg before taking on board. I also know that one is not meant to bring cardboard boxes on board from a supermarket

I do wonder how likely it is that one can get cockroaches from unwashed fruit and veg? Why stop there? Why not wash the cereal box that was also in car board boxes? What about the butter packs etc
Click to expand...

We haven't seen many cockroaches in 30+ years of Med charters. And never been recommended to wash fruit and veg before taking aboard (as distinct from before eating).

With the notable exception of this post's story.

Mike.
 
AndrewB said:
After years of taking every precaution, successfully, we became more careless about taking packaging aboard and four years ago in Cuba picked up a dose. Embarrassingly, the first appeared at the very moment I was boasting to a guest that we'd never had them.

They may be quite harmless but, as Martyn78 says, they provoke you to extreme measures. I would get up in the middle of the night, turn the galley lights on suddenly and squash them as they dashed for cover. The worst time was getting four at once. But when we reached Florida and really effective cockroach treatments, we cleared them in less than a month and have never seen one aboard since.

Yes, in the tropics don't think supermarkets are safe. A hazard to expect if you disturb the boxes at the back of the shelf. I remember one supermarket in French Polynesia where they were scuttling everywhere. The locals were stepping daintily around them on the floor, and blowing them off the produce. I stamped on a couple to greatly disapproving frowns.
Click to expand...

I'm not surprised that you got disapproving frowns, squashing a cockroach releases it's eggs....

We, well MrsE, got rid of the ones we had aboard by assiduously spraying all the areas she saw them and especially any she saw in midnight light on raids.
 
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