Shower solutions!

[Tspringer]

We just got back from 8 days on board our new to us '81 Stevens 47 in St. John. Love the boat (she sails GREAT) but the showering situation was, lets say.... interesting.

The prior owner and his wife apparently believed that sudsing off with Joy liquid in salt water was all that you needed and thats all they did. The heads in the boat have sinks and showers (they are "wet heads", no separate shower stall) that drain straight to the bilge. They did not use the showers at all and they put bowls in the sinks and poured the water into the toilets to be pumped overboard.

Well, we like fresh water showers! This was an immediate problem...

I refused to use the showers below as I did not want the bilge to become a foul mess.

The boat came with a fresh water shower on the aft deck. This consisted of two stainless steel round covers over two fittings. One covered a bronze gate valve and the other a simple pull out shower head. Ok, thats good... BUT, the fitting had long since corroded off the gate valve and the shower hose and head was the most foul looking thing you have ever seen.

Ahhhhh boat project number one: I got a new bronze gate valve, a length of hose and a new shower head plus some hardware and I replaced the old stuff. So we had a rudimentary fresh water shower on the aft deck. The only problem is that the only gate valves available had a much shorter neck that the one originally on the boat meaning the opening/close fitting barely protruded above deck and was VERY hard to turn on and off AND we only had access to cold water. But so what, it worked fine for a week.

Still, I have to have a permanent solution. I will post a separate thread on the bigger picture solution for the heads below, but for the immediate project we want a really nice hot and cold water aft deck shower.

I have been looking at this:

ATTWOOD AFT DECK SHOWER SYSTEM - Shower Equipment by Discount Marine Supplies

I have concerns. I would not mount this on the transom and it would be to hard to reach and would weaken things. If I wanted to mount it flush on the aft deck through the aft lazerette this would work, and it could probably go where the existing fittings are located. BUT... it would require a much larger mounting hole in the deck to install and this entire thing is plastic. That scares me. What if it UV degrades and falls apart when a large wave breaks over the stern in heavy weather? Now I have a big hole in the aft deck. Is that realistic?

I searched and tried to find something similar in 316 stainless but no luck. I have also though about having a stainless mounting bracket made with a lip and a stainless cover plate for use when going offshore.... this may work.

Or I could mount this thing on the aft side of the cockpit coaming (boat is center cockpit) perhaps?

Ideas? Comments? Solutions?



Terry