Life on a Boat - Laundry day on the boat
22 01, 17
I think I have the laundry routine worked out. Fill a 5 Gal bucket with dirty clothes, add warm water, about 1/4 oz of "All Free Clear" (more if any oily or greasy clothes are in the bucket) and 1 oz of ammonia (more if is really dirty). If you have really dirty stuff — use more soap and ammonia but you will need to have a second bucket of clean water to rinse clothes when you pull them out of the wash bucket as the soap residue will cause mildew to grow. Take the bucket to the cockpit and stomp on the clothes with bare feet (while pant legs are rolled up and sunglasses are on — it looks cool that way). Let clothes soak in the bucket and repeat stomping every 30 min or so. After a few hours take out the cleaner laundry and hang on the life lines, let the dirtier stuff soak longer and get more stomps. There is only room for about 6 items on the sunny side of the life lines so having some clothes soak longer is good.
If you have really dirty stuff, pull out the wringer (mangler) and run the dirty stuff through it once or twice instead of stomping. The wringer is also used for thick items like towels to get most of the water out before hanging them to dry.
It is amazing how dirty that water is when you pull the clothes out. I do laundry about twice a week depending on weather. Last couple of wash days have been great cause the humidity is down near 50% here as a result of the cold front that passed last week. Clothes dry really fast this week.
If you have really, really dirty stuff, you can tie it in a mesh bag, secure a 30ft line to the stern and toss it over board while sailing. A few million gallons of clean sea water does a good job of cleaning, but then you have to rinse the stuff in fresh water two or three times using the wringer between each rinse to get all the salt out. You don't want to have salt in your clothing, it attracts moisture. Given the amount of rinsing, you safe a lot of fresh water by not using this method and instead increase the soap in the bucket, stomp more, soak longer, and use the wringer.
Washing the rugs is another deal. This is done by laying them on the bow and fetching multiple buckets of ocean water to more across them and then scrub this with a brush. Let them sit, fetch more water to run across them, repeat as needed. When done hang the rugs on the boom and secure them with the "preventer" lines (already lost one rug to high winds in the BVI cause I didn't use the preventer lines to secure it). The number of times this is done each day or week depends on Jupiter and Cinco. If either if them is sick then I'm doing this everyday or more. We have had a couple of days with no rugs in the boat because all of the rugs and the spare rugs were being washed and dried.
If you have really dirty stuff, pull out the wringer (mangler) and run the dirty stuff through it once or twice instead of stomping. The wringer is also used for thick items like towels to get most of the water out before hanging them to dry.
It is amazing how dirty that water is when you pull the clothes out. I do laundry about twice a week depending on weather. Last couple of wash days have been great cause the humidity is down near 50% here as a result of the cold front that passed last week. Clothes dry really fast this week.
If you have really, really dirty stuff, you can tie it in a mesh bag, secure a 30ft line to the stern and toss it over board while sailing. A few million gallons of clean sea water does a good job of cleaning, but then you have to rinse the stuff in fresh water two or three times using the wringer between each rinse to get all the salt out. You don't want to have salt in your clothing, it attracts moisture. Given the amount of rinsing, you safe a lot of fresh water by not using this method and instead increase the soap in the bucket, stomp more, soak longer, and use the wringer.
Washing the rugs is another deal. This is done by laying them on the bow and fetching multiple buckets of ocean water to more across them and then scrub this with a brush. Let them sit, fetch more water to run across them, repeat as needed. When done hang the rugs on the boom and secure them with the "preventer" lines (already lost one rug to high winds in the BVI cause I didn't use the preventer lines to secure it). The number of times this is done each day or week depends on Jupiter and Cinco. If either if them is sick then I'm doing this everyday or more. We have had a couple of days with no rugs in the boat because all of the rugs and the spare rugs were being washed and dried.