I think it all goes back to when I was a kid. We had a cottage at Grand Beach and went out to the cottage the day that school ended and did not return to the city until we had to go back to school.
During that time we would have breakfast, then pack a snack and head down to the main "Front Beach". We would spend the entire day in and out of the lake until it was time to go home for supper. (No worry about sun screen or hats in those days.) After supper we would go down to the "Back Beach" (very rocky, but very close to the cottage) for a final swim before bed. So, for me it's kind of a nostalgic thing.
Now that I give it some thought, we had no indoor plumbing in those days, just an outhouse. We got our drinking water from the pump at the bottom of the hill and the water for our dishes and laundry came from the rain barrel. We had no shower and no bathtub. I don't ever remember having a bath at the beach. The whole time, through July and August you swam in the lake and if you wanted to wash your hair, you took the shampoo with you when you went for your evening swim, and that probably only occurred on Thursday nights before the weekend. There was a wash basin that you could take into a bedroom if you felt the need, which I never did until I got to be a teenager.
I guess that's the reason I have never been all that concerned about not having a shower on our boat. I can swim, bathe and wash my hair in the lake until the weather makes it prohibitive, then I do have hot a cold running water on the boat, so I can have a sponge bath. Like my auntie Toni defined it, "A sponge bath is when you wash down as far as possible, then you wash up as far as possible, then you wash "Possible", when you get home."
