Over the years, before I retired, I was involved in the car cleaning business; as the business grew more and more, we found other things to wash. When I retired, our franchisees who had operated in 23 states were washing trucks, locomotives, concrete, planes, buses, police cars, postal vehicles, new car lots, houses, windows, and even boats in the marina water. It is actually difficult to clean the boats in the water at the marina, we did it from a pontoon platform. Now, I’d like to talk about this a second time if I may.

You see, when you’re on a boat and you’re trying to clean another boat, you’re brushing down the sides, but every time you brush and put pressure on the other boat’s hull, you’re moving away from the boat you’re trying to clean. That makes it extremely difficult. Now you can brush up and down, but then you end up rushing into the water and getting a lot of algae on the brush. To say the least, it’s very difficult, but I don’t think it has to be, and let me tell you why.

Also, by the time I retired, we had set up detail shops, truck washes, and even fixed-site car washes, yes, the business grew quite a bit. Interestingly, it seems to me that it would be possible to build a boat washer that was more like a car wash. And this is how it would work. The ship’s hull would enter a semi-enclosure, though it would allow sailing ship masts to protrude through the center of the building. Then the walls or sides of the boat wash would slowly move inwards towards the boat hull to adjust to its exact size.

As the boat moved, it was brushed under and around the sides, while the top of the boat was rinsed with fresh water – after the hatches had been closed by workers, of course. It seems that such a system could exist, it would be quite easy to wash boats, and they would line up to be washed, just as they do with the car wash. It’s not that this system is that hard to build; the question is whether the industry would accept it and whether the engineering to build such a device and install it would be worth the time, energy and capital costs.

Now, I’ve been to marinas in every state in the continental US that borders the ocean, and also to many marinas on the largest lakes in the United States. In fact, I think this can work. Please consider all of this.