Boat owners who regularly anchor in rivers and estuaries will have experienced the horrible situation where their chain/rope and anchor comes up caked in mud and sludge. If they don't have some sort of anchor wash system the smelly stuff makes a big mess on the deck.
Britannia has two powerful deck-wash systems, both highly effective for cleaning a dirty anchor and rode, ensuring it passes into the chain locker in a reasonably unsoiled condition.
The main item of course is the pump, an Aqua-Jet WD 5.2 wash-down pump from the Johnson Pumps Company. This is one of the more powerful pumps with a 70 psi pressure, (about the same as a house), and easily sucks water up Britannia’s side. The pump has a detachable easy to clean filter that saves having to buy and fit a separate one in the line. The filter also swivels, allowing the outlet hose to point forward or back, making it easier to use. The hand nozzle can also be locked in the open position. The nozzle fits on the hose with a push fitting, so you don't have to unscrew anything when you need to remove it for a continuous higher flow, when emptying a dinghy or as a bilge pump. There are four large rubber feet under the baseplate, so this pump can be placed anywhere on deck without fear of it rolling around and damaging anything. The pump uses 5/8” inch water hoses that has some 60% greater volume, to give the maximum jet.
Whenever the dinghy gets full of rain water it is a simply matter to drop the end of the hose in the boat and pump it dry in just a few minutes from on deck, this is better than climbing into the waterlogged dinghy with a hand-bailer. A portable deck wash can be used to pump anything you need to pump water on or off, or out of not just your boat or dinghy. It can be used to empty an ornamental fountain in a garden, that I could never completely empty with a small bailer.
Britannia also has a fixed deck wash pump drawing sea water from a hull fittings and attached to the windlass battery. A hose can be connected to the deck valve and used to wash the deck without any other attachments. The pump is switched on and off from the deck valve.
