Laundry

[Sailor g]

Originally Posted by zeehag

sailor g--is why the flap n fold laundries are so good .. cheap and easy.. same day service....awesome!

Love 'em. :thumbs: We used a great one in Ensenada but got charges a bit much by Dolores in Turtle Bay- but after soaking all our warm clothes in storms on the way down- she was close and being warm & sleeping trumped doing it ourselves. LOL.

[sailorchic34]

Ammonia is a waste byproduct of aquatic life. Higher life (Reptile and mammal) convert excess nitrogen into urea, Aquatic life in part of the protein process emit ammonia as part of their waste stream.

Most fish can tolerate 0.5 ppm of ammonia without much problem. It also is metabolized by plants and others. So it does not stay in the marine enviroment long. Which is a good thing otherwise fish that... hum... pass wind... well it might be lethal to them...

A 1/2 cup of household ammonia in 2 gallons of water is roughly 1600 ppm of ammonia. Household ammonia BTW is roughly a 5% solution of ammonia. While 1600 ppm will kill fish, it will be diluted very quickly to safe (for fish) levels

[rebel heart]

Originally Posted by Aussiesuede

Whilst underway:

1st thing is to start wearing seawater friendly clothing. (Think board shorts & rash guards)

2nd thing is to stop wearing underwear. (I still can't figure out the purpose of underwear. My mom dressed me in them as a kid, but after living in Hawaii as a young adult who was in the water everyday - I stopped wearing em and have never come up with a good reason to go back to wearing em.)

Drop yesterdays boardshorts, rash guard, & bikinis in a 5 gallon bucket with laundry detergent and let soak for an hour. Then rinse. When done daily, unless you've been working on the motor, you'll always be fresh & clean.

Ashore? Whatever you're use to doing.

I need the support, I suppose. Swinging kettlebells around or going running, got to keep the gear from slamming about.

[colemj]

Originally Posted by rebel heart

I need the support, I suppose. Swinging kettlebells around...

Braggart.

Mark

[Danibug]

Originally Posted by teejayevans

The question is how much fresh water does it take to rinse out all the salt?

I prefer shoreside (marina) facilities. You don't have to stay at the marina to use their laundry in many cases, may have to pay a small fee to use the dinghy dock.
Generally I stop at a marina every 3-4 weeks, fill up water tanks, do laundry, provisioning, etc, and leave the next day.
Tom

I am wondering this exactly too. I recently wrote about whether or not to bring a watermaker on board with us.

One of the reasons I am leaning towards a watermaker is for laundry. How much water does it really take to get all that salt out?

Where were you and how much does it cost to dingy to a marina back and forth to a marina where you can get water and use their laundry facility?

[Captain Bill]

I get a real kick out of seeing all of the greenies worrying about the small sh*# all the while wandering blindly through life ignoring the ecological damage they are causing but choose to convieniently ignore. One thing people need to get over is thinking that they can even live without impacting their environment. Ammonia is the natural nitrogen excretion of fish from protien mentabolism. In small amounts it acts as a fertilzer and in large amounts it can be toxic. If one dumps a cup full of household ammonia overboard once a week it's not going to cause any major issue. The so called green soaps that are supposidly non-toxic are total BS. They are surfactants. They may be non-toxic to a thick skinned mammal but they will be deadly to larval fish and other soft bodied marine organisms. Non-toxic probably means a mammal cannot drink enough to hurt themselves, but doen't say a thing about what or does to the cell membranes or slime layers of larval fish. People who worry about the small sh*# think nothing of pumping thousands of small fish and inverts through their engine heat exchangers and directly injecting them into their engine hot exhausts, not to mention clubing them to death with a thrashing propeller. The only way you can stop impacting the environment is to contribute your 20 lbs or so of carbon to the carbon cycle and leave the rest of us in peace. The problem seems to be a lack of volunteers. Stop sweating the small stuff. Rant over

[redsky49]

Regarding having one of the locals handle your wash - be absolutely certain as to the cost beforehand.

On one occasion, when we thought we were paying $1 per pound of laundry, we were actually charged $1 per item. That may work well for large sheets and towels, but when a pair of socks ($2), or one underwear ($1), etc. get added in, it gets costly very quickly.

Language error on my part I suppose, but lesson learned.

One more reason to carry a couple empty 5 gallon buckets on board.

[SVTatia]

I was expecting that someone had one or would post a comment about the hand-cranked washing machines. Ineffective? Too small or too much work perhaps?

http://www.laundry-alternative.com/wonderwash.htm

[Roy M]

Clothes Wringer - Comfort - Cruising & Fishing Gear - Downwind Marine

Downwind Marine, one of the reasons San Diego is the cruising axis of the universe.

[onestepcsy37]

sometimes you get lucky. we were anchored at allans cay in the exumas. our tender, a watertender 9.4, was tethered behind us. for those of you who don't know, the watertender has a central seat that divides the interior into two compartments, fore and aft. it rained hard one night. i woke up in the morning to check the tender and discovered it was filled with rain water. 'get the laundry!' i yelled to my wife. i jumped in the dinghy with a bottle of laundry soap and put some in the stern 'compartment'. she passed me the laundry. i washed in the stern, rinsed in the fore, and passed the clean clothes up to her. she pinned them to the lifelines. thank you mother nature.

we were weathered in at an anchorage on the ditch, just opposite a fancy condo/marina development south of stuart florida. after a week of waiting i dinghied into the marina and asked the dock boy if they had a laundry and if we could use it. he readily agreed. i went back to the boat, got the admiral and the laundry, and we spent the afternoon doing laundry, hanging out in the common room which included free coffee, magazines, tv, and loafing around watching the boats come and go.

and yes, keep your clothes simple but have lots of them. this will allow you to go quite a long time between laundry days. we wash in the galley sink occasionally as well as the bucket whenever a laundromat isn't available.

[SunDevil]

Originally Posted by ohdrinkboy

Can't believe no on has said......stop wearing clothes!

If you sail where the weather's warm, that is the plan.

Although swimsuits aren't too bad if you rinse the salt water off and hang them up to dry.

Second, pick the types of clothes that you buy to be 'easy' to wash and dry. Nothing should need to be ironed. This can be done prior to setting sail in the acquiring supplies phase of the boat buying process. Make sure the colors you get are good too. They shouldn't show dirt very easily, and should dry quickly.

No socks. I hate matching socks.

I would like to get some suggestions about sheets and pillow cases. In the summer I don't use any sheets, except for the bottom one over the mattress. It would need to be washed, and would be a pain to do it on a boat. There must be some type of material that is comfortable, but water proof and warm that has been made into a bed spread/comforter.

[bobconnie]

Dog Gone !! most of you folks sure use a lot more clothing then we do !! Connie may use 2 pair of shorts a week and 3 or 4 sometimes 5 tee shirts, I use 2 pair of shorts and go without a shirt , but may use 2 tee shirts a week! all this and our sheets will wash in one laundry net bag in 2 hours dragging behind the boat and use maybe a gallon of fresh water to rinse !! We have been useing an old maytag wringer for a LONG time and it cost 5 bucks at a garage sale LOL of course I would sail naked but my butt burns to bad LOL just sayin, if your not going ashore whats the big deal about how your stuff looks as long as the smells gone LOL

[teejayevans]

Originally Posted by Danibug

I am wondering this exactly too. I recently wrote about whether or not to bring a watermaker on board with us.

One of the reasons I am leaning towards a watermaker is for laundry. How much water does it really take to get all that salt out?

Where were you and how much does it cost to dingy to a marina back and forth to a marina where you can get water and use their laundry facility?

Bahamas - Marsh Harbour - free to dock dink, ~$4/load
West Palm Beach, Riveria Marina, was $5/day to dock dink, think it may be $10 now, ~$3.50/load
Titusville Marina, I think was same as Rivera
Stuart, dink dock in park is free, laundry is next door to publix 1/4 mile down the street, I think was ~$3.50/load
Miami, free dink dock, laundry place is about a mile away, but I didn't use it.

If its about cost, I would go without the watermaker, if its about convenience then maybe, but they are expensive, need power, and have a reputation for needing regular maintenance.
Don't forget you can get water for free the old fashion way: clean your decks before it rains using salt water, wait for it to rain a few minutes to wash off the salt residue, then open your water tank fill ports. You may have have to channel the water or plug deck drains, and I use a porous clean cloth stuck in the fill port to filter out debris.
Tom

Tom

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Danibug

I am wondering this exactly too. I recently wrote about whether or not to bring a watermaker on board with us.

One of the reasons I am leaning towards a watermaker is for laundry. How much water does it really take to get all that salt out?

Where were you and how much does it cost to dingy to a marina back and forth to a marina where you can get water and use their laundry facility?

It costs next to nothing since: a) you can row the dink, b) you can use a 2hp outboard (or an electric outboard), c) you can drop the laundry at the launderette and use the 30 or 40 minutes to do some shopping/emailing,etc..

Washing machines use quite a lot of water and your gray water tank would fill up pretty fast. Then what do you do with all this soap/powder loaded ballast? Illegal to dump in most countries and indeed very nasty to all marine creatures.

One load laundry in our marina costs 10 USD, a watermaker and a washing machine would cost us some 4000 USD. So we can wash 400 times before we actually balance the plain cost of the equipment. Let alone maintenance, parts, weight and energy!

Small items can be washed by hand anyways.

Simplify your cruising kit, use launderettes whenever available.

Cheers,
b.

[mrm]

Originally Posted by micah719

[...]I'm too busy sucking the corner of my delicious coconut flavoured towel. Hmmmm, I wonder if there's a way to infuse rum and pineapple flavours in the soap....a new cruising business-idea opens up!

You are not the first one
I think you should read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", something tells me you'll enjoy it

Re laundry: mostly laundromats when visiting marinas, plus washing small items in a sink.