Water

Vero Beach, FL

No LL

Every morning at dawn, Libby goes down to the river. There she bathes and washes the clothes by beating them on the rocks. On the return trip she carries the day's fresh water in a big pottery jar balanced on her head.

Whoops, got carried away there. That's not how we live. It is something I read in National Geographic Magazine. On the other hand, the way we really do live may seem primitive to you.

We carry about 75 gallons of fresh water onboard. With that, we can go for 30-60 days depending on how careful we are. The main choice is to use fresh water or salt water to wash the dishes. In places like Vero, we use fresh water. In the Bahamas we use salt water.

When our water is exhausted, I have to go and fetch more water. No I don't have a pottery jug, but I do have several 5 gallon plastic jerry jugs. It takes 15 jugs full to fill up if we're completely empty. Our water tanks are under the floor in the main cabin. Each jug must be lifted up on deck then lowered into the main cabin. The chore of fetching the water and filling the tanks takes 1 to 3 hours, depending on how far I have to travel in the dinghy to find the water.

In the Bahamas, water is expensive ($0.50/gallon) and low quality. We try to bring all the water we need before going there. An onboard water maker would be nice, but they're too expensive for us.

In places like Vero and Marathon, I fill the jugs at the marina. It takes a lot of trips to fill so many jugs. When we're on the go on the East Coast, we generally fill the water tanks at the same time we buy diesel fuel. That eliminates the fetching chore. When we stay at a slip in a marina we also fill the water tanks.

We use foot pumps to pump fresh water in the galley and in the head. We have no running water and no hot water onboard Tarwathie. If we did have running water, our use would double or triple simply because one wastes more. Libby misses having hot water, but that's not very practical for Tarwathie. Therefore, to wash dishes we heat up a pan of water on the stove.

We do laundry at coin laundromats. Libby knows, by memory, the location of every reachable laundromat on the USA East Coast. We can go for a week before needing a wash. In a pinch, we can stretch double that time at the expense of personal hygiene. On the ICW we are often forced to pay $50 to $100 for an overnight stay at a marina just to do laundry. We hate that. If we had a bigger boat, we could keep two week's worth of clothes on board and thus halve the frequency of laundromat runs.

Laundry by hand? With or without boulders in the river, we've never done that. In Europe, I used to wash my underwear in the bathroom sink of my hotel rooms, then hang them to dry on the little clothes-lines they supply. I hated that.

Those who cross oceans on sailboats refer to laundry as "our dirty little secret" There are no laundromats and fresh water is too precious to use for laundry. I've read that some cruisers wait for a rain storm, then they plug up the cockpit drains, throw all their dirty clothes out there, and dance naked while stomping on them. Sounds like a naked Lucy Ricardo. The more common and simple solution is seldom discussed. It is to become nudist for the duration of the passage.

Showers? I'll address that another day.