Ahhh ...

Just a quick update - we have hot water again, after a detour that for a while involved no pressure water at all.   This morning I was able to take a hot shower on the boat instead of walking to the bathhouse to shower.   I hate that.  Our marina bathhouse is really quite nice, but what I hate about showering there isn't the walking there carrying my soap and shampoo and towel and comb, or the shower itself, what I hate is walking back with chilly wet hair.  Ugh, doing that feels so much like camping out.  Such a simple thing, but when the comfort bar had been lowered by our recent weeks without, being able to shower aboard had all the relaxing effects of going to the spa.

Here's the story in photos:

For a while, we had no pressure water at all.  So we used this (new, clean) garden sprayer.  We took water from the dock faucet and heated it up on the stove.  The hassle factor inspired us to be conservative.

Dan showing off our slick new tank, about the size of an office water carboy 

He played varsity football in high school; here he is ready to "tackle" the project. 

Like many boat projects, installation involved squirming into tight spaces, like this spot under the nav station to access the back of the hot water heater and the locker it will reside in.

Then later in the project, Dan was in the cockpit locker connecting up the hoses at the front of the hot water heater  that allow the engine coolant to cycle through the tank, simultaneously cooling the engine and heating up our water underway when there's no shore power to plug into.  While he was in this locker, I was under the nav station like he was in the photo above, reinstalling the panel from the back.

Ahhh ... wonderful hot water!