Have you ever spent a long day working, cooking or cleaning and then headed for the shower, to let the warm water wash away the tensions of the day, as you stand for minutes on end, inhaling the sweet smell of lavender body wash??? Then you, my friend, do NOT live on a boat!! Though I could go on and on about the benefits of our summer life aboard NuTrix, long, hot showers are not among them!! Our head, aka bathroom for you landlubbers, is about the size of most people's refrigerators and NO I am not exaggerating!!
We have a sink, a toilet and sliders behind the toilet to keep towels and toilet paper dry while we shower. Oh, did I forget to mention that the shower consists of a nozzle that pulls out of the sink. Ray, being the wonderful captain that he is, installed a shower curtain so that we now can leave the door open and get the air to flow which makes it easier to dry off after showering. We do have hot water, but who in their right mind wants hot water to shower with when it is 90 degrees outside?? Not this sailor girl....!! Our 41 foot sailboat carries 90 gallons of water in the front tank and 25 in the galley tank. Ray also installed a cockpit shower tank that holds 10 gallons, but it is slightly looked down upon in the mooring field to use the back of one's boat to take care of parts.... ya know!!! So our boat holds about 125 gallons of wonderfully refreshing water. If you ever want to understand conservation, come and visit for a day or two!! Here in America, we tend to believe that everything comes from an unending source, fed, I guess, from a spring of magic deep inside of a fairy tree??? Call me a tree hugger if you will, but I have been aboard our boat, with seven people and totally out of water. Let me tell you, there is not one person out there who would not only hug a tree but kiss it and call it your momma if it would produce one drop of precious water when there is nothing but the ocean all around!! But back to my shower story....... 100 gallons of water is not that much when you consider, showers, cooking, washing hands, brushing teeth, cleaning up and just daily use that most of us do not give a second thought. So when we do shower, the water cannot run continually. If it did, we would have one shower and at least be clean when the Coast Guard found our boat floating around and us, lifeless from dehydration!! That would not be a fun blog......
So, let me introduce you all to showering on a boat. It takes some skill and a little practice and a lot of humor!! First, remove anything that you do not want to get wet. This includes toilet paper... live and learn...!!!
Once all is removed, turn on the water and rinse over your hair.... turn off water.... put shampoo in hair and scrub.... turn on water... rinse hair.... turn off water.... apply conditioner so you can get a brush through since there is no way that you got all of the shampoo out that quickly..... turn on water... rinse hair.... turn off water.... decide if the cascade of shampoo over your body was enough to call it clean... turn on water... rinse body... turn off water.... towel off and apply baby powder because even with a fan and the door open, it is 90 degrees outside and nothing is going to dry... and I mean NOTHING!!! After you finally get dressed, your shower fun is not yet over! Why, you ask.... well because not only do you have to dry yourself off, you have to dry off the toilet and the sink and the counter!
Oh, the joys of living on a sailboat! This is the time that you give thanks that the head is actually small and the clean up isn't too monumental!! Of course after all of the cleaning, you are kind of sweaty and in need of a good shower, but you decide instead to take a cold drink up to the bow and watch the sun set over the water. Ray is great about putting our chairs up on deck, turning on the music and making sure we have front row seats for the sunset celebration. We sit on our bow and look around at all of the other sweaty clean people and offer up a toast to the best life that there is... Just be careful with how much ice you put in that drink..... but that's another story!!!!!
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