Shower water and soap

Refreshing" Bermuda bird bath."
It does not matter how big a boat you have, you are camping.

This is for a re fresher at sea to get rid of" sea grunge, we do this trick on all of our ocean crossings.


Wet ones
For an on deck refresher, we make up our own wet ones for use on hot *summer days.


Cut up a bunch of soft paper towels into quarters place in large tupper ware container with lid , add a little water and some *nice smelly stuff *place in fridge ready for use.

Bermuda Bird bath
You will need a one gallon pail from Wally world.
fill pail with one quart *of water add a few drops of after shave to make you smell real nice and add some ice cubes. Using a micro cloth you will *have your" Bermuda bird bath."


Now here is *the ultra towel
When we go camping on a motorcycle we have not got room for a bunch of towels and even if so how do you get them dry.


Mavis to the rescue with Auto Chamois
We each have our own personal auto chamois hers is pink mine is blue.
We find this an excellent way *to " pat dry off" . it is a portable hair dryer also.


Donald & Mavis
How do you know when you need a bath, well ! it is when the seaguls stay 50 ft off.















-- Edited by SOMERS on Sunday 27th of February 2011 06:25:43 AM

Somers,
Great ideas
I especially like the Auto Chamois for saving room!

Soft water.

We catch rainwater from our roof which is stored *in a specially constructed 13,000 gal capacity *room under *the kitchen.


It is not necessary to treat the water as no light can enter the space.


The water is very soft and consequently we find it very easy to rinse soap off.


We have tried every *kind of bar soap out there and have come to the conclusion that Dove has them all beat, unfortunately we don't get much milage out of bar Dove soap.


We use Ivory bar soap at home for hand washing, alternately anti bacterial liquid soap works well.


However after swimming from our boat in our very salty water .


On the Boat we have a sponge bucket bath in the cockpit *using ivory liquid, with no after effects, *that is the best we can find to cut the salt.


With respect to boat water in addition to that which we carry in our tanks,we bring additional 5 *x 5 gallon jerry water jugs.


On the boat we always drink and cook with bottled water.
We never drink water from the boat tank.
For most boat tanks here only use*no more than 1 /2 cap of clorox .
City water comes pretreated not requiring clorox which may contribute to water being hard .

Donald *& Mavis









-- Edited by SOMERS on Sunday 27th of February 2011 08:21:48 AM

I have some recent experience with the whole shower sump question.* Last summer during our Puget Sound to Alaska trip*we began to have more than the usual amount of water in the bilge.* My first thought was the stuffing box or a leaking through hull...nope, it turned out being a syphoning shower sump pump box.* Both the shower sump and the through hull for the pump were below the water line and we were pulling sea water back into the boat after using the sump.* The temporary fix was to install a switch and to shut the through hull valve between showers.

The permanent*fix was to install one of the Whale Gulper pumps, an in-line switch and then plumb the pump hose up (above the water line) to tee with the sink in the head.* Bingo...a completely dry bilge.* Plus we have eliminated a big source of odors in the boat (grey water + sea water).

The old shower sump assembly had a little bilge pump, a float switch and is supposed to have a back flow preventer (which obviously failed).* Pictured below are the old sump assembly and the new Gulper.**

*

-- Edited by Steppen on Sunday 27th of February 2011 08:51:09 AM

SOMERS wrote:

"

It does not matter how big a boat you have, you are camping.





Very true- This is something the Admiral always says.

JohnP

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*

I also switched from the shower sump box to the Whale pump and it's one of the best improvements ever made to my boat. For a soap, you can't beat plain old Ivory if you want something that will rinse off perfectly and leave nothing behind but your behind.

-- Edited by Keith on Sunday 27th of February 2011 12:09:03 PM

We bought a gallon of "Campsuds" which we use for showers and dishes, as it is biodegradable. No complaints. Rinses off just fine.

-- Edited by Carey on Sunday 27th of February 2011 01:29:00 PM

I use Dove soap on board.
My fresh water is stored in S/S tanks and has never been in tank treated.
I have a carbon filter on the water for the galley sink from which drinking and cooking water is drawn.
The bottled water furphy is not accepted on board as it is a plastic consumer and a joke on the community.

Since my previous post on this thread I have halved my water tankage from 2000 lts (500 gal) to 1000 lt (250 gal) and installed a RO water maker.
Best decision I have ever made.
Still have enough water on board for the Boss and I to spend a week or so up the Creeks and Rivers and not have to get water from any other source.

Benn

Yes, we were advised to use Dove also. It is sort of a soap substitute which comes in bars, works well, but does not seem to accumulate and build up on surfaces like ordinary soap does.

A very big thanks to you Steppen as I was about to do that. But why could'nt one just make a high loop in the discharge hose?

Good question.* I wanted to close one of the through hulls, and only use a single for the shower sump and the sink in the head.* Also, with my particular layout I would*have*to have used 6 or 8 feet more of hose to create a loop up high enough to be above sea level and still out of site in one of the cabinets in our head.* Best, simplest solution was to plumb from the Gulper pump up to the sink and put a tee in the sink drain but still above the water line.


-- Edited by Steppen on Monday 28th of February 2011 02:14:22 PM

Saw a program on submarines the other day.* On attack submarines,*bathing is*extremely limited.* They showed one guy taking a shower.* He used about a pint of water, but all he did was wet his head.* Surely they had a watermaker on board, but water pumps are noisy, so the narrator said.* Better to be on a boomer where people aren't so tightly packed.

rgano wrote:

In general, bar soap will tend to have a tendency to leave deposits in a sump system sooner than liquid soap.

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This is the case because bar soap resolidifies on surfaces when it dries. We (when I say "we", I mean Bess )cleaned the teak grates of Skinny Dippin' a few months after we bought her 2.5 years ago. There was caked soap scum stuck on there like glue and it took two tried to get it all off. Since then, we use liquid body wash and the grates, drain, walls, and sump are all in perfect condition. Once a month I'll grab the Shop-Vac and suck the water that the pump doesn't get out of the sump and clean it up real nice. I need to add a check valve to it and the cover has been gone since we bought it, but otherwise... no problems.

We have a shower and hose in the aft cockpit so we take our showers there. There are two overboard drains so no worries about pumps, sumps, hair, scum, etc. Of course, this only works if nobody is within sight and it's fairly warm.

We have a shower in the head compartment also that drains into a pump. Turn the pump on, take a shower, then turn the pump off. It's supposed to be able to run dry for short periods without harm. We haven't used the inside shower yet.

As for water use, there's an on/off button on each showerhead.

rwidman wrote:Of course, this only works if nobody is within sight and it's fairly warm.

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Not if the name on your transom is Skinny Dippin'!!