Dean Gets Clean

We ended up anchoring out for the Fourth of July weekend so we didn't have the luxury of having showers awaiting us like we do when we stay in a marina. Unfortunately, Further does not have a good shower setup in the head (aka bathroom). The head is made up of all wood, very pretty but not really functional. There is also no shower sump which leaves all of the dirty water to sit in our bilge, the area under the floor of the boat to be pumped out. You know, the area where you don't necessarily really want water to be. 

Because of this we invested in an 'outside shower' of sorts to use at our anchorages. We always have a plan B. It's made up of an industrial sprayer (like the ones you use to spray oil and pesticides) and we added a hand held shower head on it to make it more shower like. On our sail into Sutton's Bay we did fill up our sprayer with clean lake water we bucketed in the middle of the lake. 

We have heard that we can ask nearby marinas to use their showers for a couple dollars if needed too. So for the first couple days anchored out at Sutton's Bay we were able to use the city marina's showers. However they did politely ask us to not use them over the holiday weekend since they would be full of boaters. This is what lead us to find a YMCA after our 17 mile bike ride that Saturday however we still needed to get clean the rest of the weekend. 

Since we weren't alone at our anchorage we didn't feel comfortable using our outside shower so we thought we can go swimming and bathe in the lake! Brilliant, or so we thought. After talking ourselves into jumping in, the water was a bit chilly at first, we went to work cleaning ourselves. Easier said than done. We didn't think of the fact that we would be using our arms soaping ourselves up instead of using them to stay afloat. So we grabbed our dinghy floats to help us keep our heads above water. Brady was able to successfully get cleaned off this way however I was not as graceful. I thought that I could sit on the floaty to help the situation but it ended up looking like one of those gladiators trying to balance on a small pedestal while the other tries to knock them off with a pugil stick. The only difference between me and gladiators was that I was competing with no one and still had problems with balancing on my foam pad. 

As I was almost successfully attempting to drown myself, Brady came up with another concoction to help me bathe without drowning... Using our fenders! He tied them to a line that was coming from the boat, shockingly there was a slight current that kept pushing me away from the boat while I was trying to bathe. Our fenders turned out to be another thing that I used to try and drown myself. I could just see this picture I was giving everyone; limbs flailing everywhere, me laughing uncontrollably and almost drowning and Brady on deck dying with laughter. We must have been a site to see. After my workout, and barely getting a handful of soap on one of my arms, I climbed back on the boat and finished off my bath with our pesticide container shower. 

So, I have to say that our first attempt to cleanse ourselves while on the boat/in the lake wasn't a complete failure. I do wish we had recorded our struggles. While toweling off we came up with the brilliant idea of first jumping in the lake to get wet, climbing back on the boat to get all soaped up then hopping back in the lake to rinse off with a final rinse of warm water from our on deck, homemade shower. This lifestyle has a steep learning curve! At least for us!!