Snorkels can get pretty nasty. All day spent in your swim bag, on the pool deck, in the trunk of your car, in your locker; one never knows what kind of nasty diseases they might pick up from hanging around with those pull buoys.
And then, you’re expected to put it in your mouth, and filter your air through it for a rousing set of 100’s head-down butterfly. If chloramines weren’t bad enough, think about inhaling straight mold.
Today’s swimming #swimhack comes from Canadian National Teamer Tera van Beilen (@teravb on Twitter). Once every couple of days, wash your snorkel in the dishwasher. Really, it works. (Want to really impress your friends? You can cook your salmon in the dishwasher too, with no detergent. But we wouldn’t recommend doing both at the same time). While surely FINIS* would never guarantee the integrity of such a rudimentary cleaning method, their products are fantastically produced and will easily hold up. Swimmers have been cleaning their snorkels this way since Dean Garraffa first received a patent for his center-mount snorkel in 1996, which would eventually become the FINIS snorkle.
If you have the model with the filter, we’d recommend taking that out first, but other than that, the snorkel can go in, mouth piece and all!
Thanks to Tera van Beilen for sharing this #swimhack with us.
Photo by Joanne Cleland, Created Image © 2013
Full disclosure: FINIS is a SwimSwam partner, though they did not pay for this post.