magnetman

I edited my post as I missed the vital word out ! Freudian slip maybe. Maybe an email to PRM Newage would be worth it. Mention foreign object in gearbox and ask for advice. They will of course say dismantle the box but they may also have other gems. From the original Amazon picture it looks like the item is quite long. About 2 inches which would make it awkward to line up.

Not to put too fine a point on it but make sure they don't take the gearbox away from the boat.

Vacuum cleaner with a reducer small enough to go in the hole. See if you can get it to stick in the end of the pipe.

Suction is an interesting option.

Is it possible this could be a plastic part with chrome on it to make it look like metal? It is Amazon after all... If it could be established, perhaps by buying another of the same item, what it is made of them it might help. If it was actually plastic then it would probably be "dealt with" by the internals of the gearbox and cause no damage. If the whole thing blows up and shatters your leg don't come running to me to complain about it.

Magnet on a string won't work but IF it is magnetic, which seems a bit improbable, one of the radio aerial telescopic type magnet retrieval tools might do it. It seems to me like the item will be aluminium. Nasty situation.

Other boaters who don't slow down when they can see you are moored on pins in a narrow channel. Blast them with the products of nature.

The freezer can be used here also. Black widow catapult and ball shaped ice blocks. Makes you feel like a ten year old again. Always good to be in touch with the inner child.

To be fair it is quite interesting to consider the moisture content and the remaining solids. I would have thought a good approach would be to have a drying system. This would of course need to be vented but once the product has a moisture content of almost zero then presumably it could be ground down with a pestle and mortar of some sort and disposed of in the same way that dead people's ashes are. It seems odd that such elaborate systems are devised to deal with what is actually a very small daily output. I mean we have huge infrastructure dealing with it all. If people just dried it out, ground it down and blew it into the wind the world would be a better place. The stories one hears about human waste containing endless toxins and being almost as dangerous as nuclear waste just seems like made up nonsense to me.

This is going down hill again isn't it.

Plenty of caution is needed on the stairwells on Thames locks as they are not cleaned. Yars ago the keepers used to regularly clean them with caustic soda mix but elfin safety put an end to that. Some of the are very slippery. I do go through certain Thames locks regularly in winter in a small launch and yes you do have to be very careful on the stairs.

I remember the canal shop geyser at Whilton (who later got banged up for sex offences) used to say that human urine was fine emptied onto grass. He was an advocate of "separating" lavatories. I thought it would kill the grass as we had ponies and when they discharged into the lawn my mother would rush out with a bucket of water post haste to prevent the otherwise inevitable brown patch. Dogs are the same as the ponies but humans apparently not a problem. One issue with discharging urine into the canal is that if there are large enough volumes it can encourage weed growth in the water which can be detrimental to navigation. Maybe CMers like this.

Rocket salad.

Maybe you could weld in a vertical tube about 6 inch diameter on the deck and have a dump through arrangement. It could double as a mooring spud pole holder.

I wonder if the council dog bins where people are supposed to put their unwanted dogs are getting filled up with this boat waste. I suppose if one were to ladle the compost into a plastic bag it would disguise it. It seems reasonably improbable that people collecting the product are tasked with inspecting the contents. If you did it wearing a balaclava this would probably help evade detection.

Well I suppose that's one approach. "Oh dear, this thing is too big to fit in the boat. I know what, let's put it out on deck and use it there."