Kelvin and Meagan's Bathroom

On a boat, a bathroom is called a "head". I think that's because everyone always hits their heads because they are so small! (nah!).

←Note the pump to the right of the toilet!

 After you go the bathroom, you have to open a valve and then pump sea water into the "head" while it pumps the refuse out of the "head". When the toilet is empty and enough salt water has washed through to make it really clean, then the valve to the sea water is closed.

When the boat is within 2 miles of the shore, the head has to be "closed". This means that the refuse that is pumped out of the toilet must go into a "holding tank", and can't be pumped into the ocean because it would lead to pollution near the shore.

When the boat is out to sea, farther than 2 miles from shore, then we leave the tank "open" and when someone pumps the toilet clean, it goes into the ocean, where it is recycled by the sea, the animals in the ocean and completely goes away, so long as it is not trash.

Did you know that you can only use about 2 squares of toilet paper! Could you do that at home?!

The sink in the bathroom doubles as a shower.

In the next picture you will see that I have pulled the water spigot out and it will serve as a shower. There is a drain in the floor of the bathroom and it automatically goes down the drain and out of the boat.

Kelvin and Meagan turn this on, with the bathroom door shut, and wet themselves down, then immediately turn it off! Then, because we have limited water, they wash their hair and put soap all over their body while the water is off. It is a good thing that it is warm down here in Mexico and Central America. Imagine taking a shower at your house right now where you have to get all wet then turn the water off until you are done soaping up! Yeech! After they soap up, they turn on the water and wash themselves down. We usually try to have everyone take a shower at the same time of day so we only have to wipe the bathroom down one time!

After they are done, the entire bathroom is wet: the head, the sink, the walls, everything! We then have to wipe it down.

How Kelvin and Meagan Live on a boat