Ugh. Pirates. Forget the bloodthirsty ravaging and village pillaging, what about the stench? I can’t imagine drawing a bath was either a priority or even a possibility on a pirate ship. Covered in blood and sweat, minimal plumbing, trash and other refuse piling up and rotting all around them. It’s unimaginable.
Actually, it’s not unimaginable. Just move onto a sailboat with three kids, a dog, and a cat and you’ll get a pretty good idea. I fear being branded a buccaneer based on smell alone. I don’t know the last time they hung a pirate on the docs as a warning to others, but I’m sure they’ve thought about bringing back the custom when a cruising sailboat comes to port.
It’s not that we’re dirty people, there are just so many things on board working against us. Honestly, I promise: it’s not us….it’s the lifestyle. Sailing is the ideal environment to brew up a pungent cocktail of olfactory assault. In other words, sailing stinks.
In the early days on the boat, we were reluctant to admit it. Everything was new, and nothing was going to get us down. When we discovered that our helm enclosure (the clear plastic thing that keeps the rain out) was shredded, and all the cushions in our cockpit (aka living room) got soaked every time it rained, we didn’t think anything of it. We were from Colorado, and were used to things drying quickly…but we weren’t in Colorado anymore. We were now in Florida, and nothing dried. It just stayed saturated, and started to smell like mildew. That’s when we discovered the cleaning power of vinegar, and started to go through it by the gallon.
There was also a persistent diesel smell. I’ve previously explained our issues there, but since we’re talking about smells, I thought I would remind you of the constant underlying smell coming from under our bed after each fill up and every time we ran the air conditioning. Luckily, this is now a smell of the past and we’re resting much easier.
It’s no secret that saltwater contains millions of microorganisms and other nasties. What they don’t tell you is that if you use the saltwater from the sea to flush your toilets (we do), those nasties will slowly build up and rot in your pipes, letting off a constant smell of bad fish and effluence in each head.
Speaking of toilets, you can’t flush your toilet paper lest you clog those precious pipes, so you have to find other “arrangements” for the tissue once spent. Oh, and speaking of poop, did I mention that we have a dog? Believe it or not, she poops too. Luckily, she obediently does her doody on the trampoline up front instead of wherever she wants (like some boat dogs). From there, we pick up her presents in little baggies and place them in a special trash can of their own. In a trash can that sits on the deck, In the heat. Get it? We had yet to figure out solutions for all of this back in the early days on the boat (we got better), and it added up. Surrounded by such nasal candy, our own personal smell was the least of our concerns, so we sort of forgot about showers. The good thing is that since everything stank, nobody on the boat really noticed that we were beginning to smell a bit like pirates.
We knew that it was going to be difficult to transition from the limitless (hot) water of a land life, to the constrained water supply on a boat, but we had no idea how difficult. We tried to head it off at the pass and bought a boat with huge water tanks and a water maker. The plan was that would allow us to play camel and carry a massive amount of water with us between stops where we could refill.
Sounds reasonable, right? The first time that I started the water maker, it literally caught on fire. Fire bad. Boat good. Bad water maker. A year sitting on the hard in Panama had rusted out the whole unit, and it was a complete loss. We replaced it (ouch $$$), but quickly realized to not rely on it always working.
Oh well, at least we had 300 gallons of water tanks, right? While 300 gallons should get us through a full 6 days at 50 gallons a day (10 per person), we had problems with two of the four tanks. The water pump wasn’t strong enough to pull from the 50 gallon tank in the starboard forward (right side, front of boat) tank, so we were down to 250 gallons. 5 days. Not bad, right? Wrong. One of the big 100 gallon tanks developed a stress fracture on the bottom, putting it out of commission. 3 days of supply. Time to learn some conservation to stretch those days out. Non-essentials like showering every day were the first to go.
At least we get a nice hot shower every few days, right? Wrong. We have to start the engines or the generator to get hot water to shower because that’s just how it works. Because why would they build a boat any other way? If we’re at a marina, we can use shore power for hot water….but why the heck would we shower on the boat at a marina that provides showers for you? I’ll tell you why.
Let’s use the marina’s hot water and shower twice a day! Perfect solution, right? Wrong. Take your pick of memory: college dorm, prison, summer camp, rv park. Now picture the communal showers you had access to. Please wear flip flops and keep your foot fungus to yourself. So, we still shower on the boat. With cold water.
At least we are in the hot tropical weather so a cold shower is fine, right? Right! Whew. (At least until we move north for the summer in the chilly Chesapeake). The farther south we got, the hotter it got, and the clearer the water got. We started swimming every day, and (probably) smelled a bit better. The need to shower was somewhat reduced, but not eliminated. We don’t exactly swim with soap. (Some people do, we just haven’t gotten there yet.) So, it got easier and easier to forget to clean up, especially for the kids. When we moved on to the Bahamas, we discovered that we had forgotten to shower for over a week. It wasn’t by choice, it just didn’t occur to us. We were all in this together, and nobody noticed. That was when we put the Friday rule in place, as a stop gap to keep us honest. Everybody showers on Friday whether they need it or not.
We’ve figured out the water tank situation, and we can now get hot water from our working generator, so at least Meredith and I are showering often again…but the kids now rebel unless it’s Friday. Eventually, we gave in and hoisted the Jolly Roger on Twig. We figured that if we are going to smell like a bunch of dirty pirates, we might as well try to get a little booty.