On a sailing/snorkeling trip, you can't use my favorite brush-on sunblock. That's because you might have to apply the sunscreen to wet skin, and the horse hair brushes on the brush-on would get wet and essentially become useless.
As usual, I look for titanium dioxide or zinc oxide sunscreen with no chemicals. Blue Lizard sunscreen came up as a search result and was ranked highly by sites such as Wirecutter. The problem with titanium dioxide or zinc oxide sunscreen is that they're harder to put on and rub in. The solution to that is to do it right. I picked the SPF 30, because me and my kids are brown people, not white people, and the savings is substantial. (Note that SPF 30 filters 97% of UVB, while SPF 50 filters 98%, so you're paying a lot for that extra 1%)
The sunscreen comes in a white bottle that turns blue in the presence of UV light. The marketing claims that it turns blue when the amount of UV is dangerous, but my experience on the Chinook was that ANY UV would cause it to turn blue, so the bottle is there to basically make you put on sunscreen during the day. The sunscreen is efficient. Between me and the two kids, with me wearing a rash guard and the kids wearing wet suits, it took us 5 days to use up a 5oz bottle. That's including a day when Bowen went to the beach with just swimming trunks and no top.
None of us got burned, and when I took Bowen in for his annual physical the day after we came back from the trip, the pediatrician complimented me by saying, "I couldn't tell you'd just come back from the tropics!" That's high praise, so I'll mark this sunscreen recommended.
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