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Old 17-06-2009, 13:09   #13
Reality Check
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Panhandle of Florida now but in a few weeks the West Indies will be home for a while!
Boat: s/v Reality Check 36' Bene
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When possible the Naked bit works best as you can generally clean the birthday suite with a salt water bath and fresh rinse.

Otherwise we do them in small loads with rain water when ever possible or salt the minimum Joy or Dawn detergent and rinse in fresh water.

If your good... and lucky you can time your cleaning so that the rains will do the rinse after you hang the articles out. In the Carib this is typically at night or early AM followed by a nice sunny day which dries the clothing fast..... even towels.

Selection of the best clothing types helps a lot. While cotton is nice, several of the poly blends with cotton seems to work best at not getting as dirty looking and clean up / dry faster and softer. I have some tan shorts that work well enough when I have to have something on :^) but wash and dry really fast. Very comfortable even while doing boat work as they don't bind like 100% cotton does.

Lighter weight fabrics generally work well but some of the blends work even better. For Clean up "rags" the stuff called "microfiber" really does a great job and cleans up well.

We find a couple of pairs of shorts and tops generally are all we use while out and that only takes a few minutes to clean up. Keep towels ready to hang out in a rain storm and let Mother Nature do the work.
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