"Remco Moedt" wrote in message laundry...how do
you wash your clothes?

If your truly cruising, your clothing needs will be fairly simple. The best
laundry system I have found is a bucket on the fwd deck. The motion of the
boat will slush the water around as good as a washing machine.

I have played around with this some and found one of those after market
screw-on lids for a standard,round, 5 gal., plastic pail. This allowed us to
lay the bucket on it's side once filled with water, detergent and clothes.
The 'slushing' action was better if the pail lay so the bottom and top were
port/stbd and held in place with bungie cords.

We were able to do about half a normal machine load at a time in a 5 gal.
pail..

If your not underway, then the old plunger in the bucket works also..

My largest problem with any hand/boat laundry situation is the wringing out
the water. If too much water is left in the clothes they take for ever to
dry (especially in the tropics). Hand wringing is hard on the fabric and
ruins the shape of most knit wear. The next best thing is a hand crank
roller wringer. The old ones that you might find at garage sales will
usually have deteriorated rubber rollers.
The new ones a more novelty than functional. I have been using a commercial
mop wringer but that is hard to mount or store.

To conserve water (as we did in the old days on the farm), we would wash
the white first then the colored in the same water. This means that you have
to catch and retain the water as you wring it out between wash and rinse.
This means you need several buckets or tubs.

After all of this is tried, I suspect that most living aboard at anchor or
maraina, will opt for the nearest laundrimat..

Steve
s/v Good Intentions