Water, Water Everywhere...

To provide hot water for your shower, your dishwasher, and your clothes washer - perhaps all three run simultaneously! - the average house these days boasts a hot water heater that holds 30, maybe even 50 gallons of hot water.

The hot water heater aboard Mazurka holds six.

Yes, six. Six gallons. Take that gallon of ice cream in your deep freeze, that gallon of milk in your jumbo refrigerator and multiply it by six. That's the most hot water there is at any given time.

If you are a man with little hair, you can take a quick shower and be done with it. But you can see how this would be a problem if you were, say, a woman with long, fine hair - very fine hair - which requires two rounds of conditioner. And if you were a woman who, though not a regular leg-shaver, periodically used a razer to clean things up. You can see how this particular woman might be screaming three-quarters into her shower, and then begin to avoid showering on the boat altogether.

"I can just go to the gym," she tells her husband.

So her new husband, wanting to please his new wife, begins to search for alternatives. A new water heater - a cylinder that holds 12 gallons, a cube that holds 10. The cube is a great price on clearance but won't fit in the engine room without knocking a hole in the wall; the 12 gallon heater costs $1400.

"I can just go to the gym" she says again.

And so she does. Monday morning, she's there to swim, then enjoy the long, hot shower. But as she steps under the nozzle...it's cold. Ice cold.

Water, water everywhere - and none of it hot.