{"id":449,"date":"2006-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=449"},"modified":"2009-04-21T08:54:16","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T13:54:16","slug":"laundry-while-cruising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/laundry-while-cruising\/","title":{"rendered":"Laundry While Cruising"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nTo do laundry in the Banks Islands, just south of the Solomons, all you need are some rocks, a source of water, and plenty of time.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have to admit that I’m a laundry junky. I find it very satisfying to wash, dry and iron. It’s one task that has a beginning, middle and finished product in a relatively short period of time.<\/p>\n

What a difference 30 years makes! Looking back to cruising on Intermezzo<\/em> in 1976, we didn’t even consider what it was going to be like cruising with two small children without any laundry facilities. We had enough on our plate converting a racing boat to a cruising boat for a family of four. We took out the second head and made a pantry, took the forepeak bunks and made an athwartship double bunk for the master stateroom, but didn’t think much about how we would handle laundry. When we went cruising, I paid to store our relatively new home washing machine and dryer for seven years – which was silly, as it would have been much smarter to sell them and buy new ones later on.<\/p>\n

Once we left California and entered Mexico and the South Pacific cruising grounds, washing clothes and linens became a big issue. We talked to other cruisers about how they handled laundry and saw people using scrub boards and buckets, portable wringers, even inflatable wading pools and toilet plungers to agitate the clothes. Not many boats had washing machines. Fresh water was an issue too, so many of us took the opportunity to take the laundry ashore whenever we could – either to find a laundry to do it for us, or to find a water tap ashore. I never tried washing the clothes in salt water, but always used fresh.<\/p>\n

I remember taking the laundry, soap, a bucket and Elyse and Sarah ashore through a small surf landing on the island of Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas Islands, so I could wash the clothes at a water tap near their dinghy facilities. On Nuka Hiva, we were able to reserve washing time at Maurice’s General Store. He kept a hand-wringer-style machine outside the store. Once the laundry was washed, we would pile it and ourselves into the rowing dinghy for the journey through the surf, back to the boat where we would hang it to dry. We soon learned that the best way to anchor the drying clothes was to pin the sides vertically. If we put the clothes pegs on the top of the wet laundry, they could be whipped around by the wind, knocking the pegs askew and tumbling the laundry into the salt water. We also learned (the hard way) to bring the clean laundry through the surf in plastic bags.<\/p>\n

There was no easy laundry solution. That’s not to say that it wasn’t fun sometimes to take laundry excursions with friends – finding fresh water streams, and socializing while we washed the clothes in out-of-the-way places.<\/p>\n

Once we got to Fiji, we had had enough of this chore, so went shopping for a small washer. Since this was before large inverters, we also had to come up with a gas generator (which we stored on deck) for power. We purchased a little green Hoover brand electric machine with a hand wringer attached. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and it did its job from then on as long as we owned Intermezzo.<\/p>\n

1981, we launched Intermezzo II<\/em> in Cape Town, South Africa. Larger water tanks, and a bigger boat, allowed us to install a small Maytag “twin tub” unit with a separate spin basket. We rinsed the washed clothes in the sink next to the machine, and popped them in the spin basket. The water which was spun out of the clothes went back into the main washing tub, reducing water consumption to a minimum.<\/p>\n

We had the luxury of a separate drier, which we fit under the companionway steps, to be used only when we were hooked up to shore power. This was especially nice the year we lived on the boat in Fort Lauderdale, while Elyse and Sarah went to school. This machine worked so well, that we wanted to use the same model when we built Sundeer<\/em> in the mid 1980s. The problem was that Maytag quit making that model by then. We contacted the manufacturer, who helped us run down remaining units in show rooms across the country. We were building boats for other folks by then, so we bought every available set of washer\/driers, saving one for ourselves.<\/p>\n

We sent both the washer and dryer to New Zealand as part of Sundeer<\/em>‘s systems. The dryer didn’t get installed before Steve left with the boat for the delivery back to California, but was stored it in the forepeak for the trip home to be installed at a later date. Running into bad weather, water soon filled up the forepeak from a leaky transducer. In the process of looking for the leak, the dryer (which was floating in salt water) was tossed overboard in 4000 fathoms of water, never to be replaced.<\/p>\n

By the time Beowulf<\/em> was built in 1994, we had to use another system. The Maytags were long gone. We opted to use an Italian brand washer\/dryer combo, sold under various labels in the States (West Marine carries these now). They were available with air vent or condensation vent for the drying cycle. The first of these machines which we had aboard had the air vent. This worked, not as well as a home machine, but in a couple of hours it would dry the clothes.<\/p>\n

This unit was mounted at the forward end of our interior and so was subject to large slamming forces when we were driving uphill. It eventually tired of this abuse and we replaced it, this time with a unit with a condensation system for drying. It did not dry the clothes. So basically, we used the washing machine and line dried the clothes. On rainy days we could string lines in Beowulf<\/em>‘s large, walk-in engine room, which was a luxury we didn’t have with the smaller boats. One advantage with the later model was its high-speed spin – significantly faster than the first washer. This got the clothes much drier, so it did not take long in the open air or the engine room to finish the process.<\/p>\n

Now we have Wind Horse<\/em> launched in 2005, and I can proudly show off my side-by-side ASKO washer and drier, beautifully hidden behind varnished doors opposite my galley. The front loading washer has such a fast spin cycle, that the clothes come out practically dry before transferring them to the dryer. Since Wind Horse<\/em> is a power boat and is very stable at sea, it’s easy to do a quick wash any time without worrying about power consumption. Underway we have plenty of electricity capacity, and at anchor we simply run the generator in order to use the drier. We usually do this in conjunction with cooling and\/or drying out the boat for an hour or so in the evening, and watch a movie at the same time.<\/p>\n

If you are looking at a compact combo washer\/drier make sure to get the model with the air vent. And buy the unit with the fastest spin cycle. Spin speed is the most important criteria. Another approach is to see if you can find a used Maytag twin tub. These were great little units – compact, miserly on water and power requirements, and just 24″ (60cm) wide and 16″ (40cm) deep. And if you want to stay simple, look at some of the bucket sized units – hand and electric – that are sold in camping and RV supply stores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To do laundry in the Banks Islands, just south of the Solomons, all you need are some rocks, a source …Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-talk","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}