I had always been intrigued by the apparent simplicity of composting toilets and began to look at them in more detail a couple of years ago. While listening in at a vendor booth at a boat show, I ran into an experienced voyaging friend who pointed to the composting head in front of us and said, “Best thing we ever put on the boat once we got back to Maine.”

Considering a composting head for your boat? In this hands-on account, sailor Andrew Howe walks through swapping out his aging marine toilet system for an Air Head composting unit aboard his 1960s Allied Seabreeze sloop. He covers the full installation — from building a custom mounting platform to wiring a solar-powered vent fan — plus what day-to-day use is really like once it’s in. After years of wrestling with pump-outs, hoses, and failing seals, he explains why the switch turned out to be one of the best upgrades he’s made to the boat.