I've seen things pulled from watery depths and I've seen the decay and grime that results from long periods spent underwater so it should have been no surprise when we pulled our dinghy out of the water, after two years in the lake, to find the bottom of the boat had become vastly different than the part above water.
Oh, but it was. What surprised me the most was how badly it stunk. It reeked and it was a greasy shade of dark brown, pockmarked by patches of a spongelike organism. Nasty is the best way to describe it.
We tried to clean it with Dinghy Cleaner. We tried Simple Green. We Googled for help and we tried bleach. We got advice to use a pressure washer (which might have worked if we had a pressure washer). We considered throwing it away.
And, then we tried the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. I use this thing all the time and it really is magic. It's great on bathtubs. It does wonders for the drip pans on an electric stove (in a rental house that's been abused). It'll take the shine right off your linoleum, whether or not that's your intention. So, we tried it on the dinghy. Why not? We had absolutely nothing to lose.
It worked. In fact, it worked beautifully. We ended up going through nine erasers but the bottom is nearly clean of all the lake gunk. A few more and it'll look like new. I should have taken pictures to demonstrate the before, during, and after. It was that remarkable.
In fact, I'm remarking on it right now.
Lessons learned?
1) Don't leave your dinghy in the lake.
2) Rethink skinny dipping.
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