Ease The MainWith Benevento and its crew

This blog goes out to our pal Crickett.    Questions we are often asked:  How do you sail at night? How do you deal with storms?  What if someone gets hurt?  Pirates, what about pirates!?! And so on, all long the theme of safety.  Not Crickett….. her biggest fear …. the hurdle she would have to clear before being willing to embark on such an adventure is ….. are ready for this ….. how do you do laundry?!  True, it’s an important question, but one I would assume would rank rather low on a mother’s list of concerns.

So here is our dirty little secret:   We don’t do a lot of laundry!  First off, we are in the tropics – we barely have any clothes on.  No socks, no shirts (Jen wears a bikini), often Dante and I go commando.  There isn’t much to wash.  And when we do don a shirt – we get a couple of days out it before it’s too ripe.  It’s not that we are lazy mind you, but rather fresh water is a scarce resource which we have to make. That takes time (1 hour to make 6 gallons) and precious battery amps (4 amps per hour).

Now, before you leave this stinky blog post thinking you would never want to be a guest aboard Benevento you should know we do laundry.  We actually have a washing machine aboard – two five gallon buckets with lids.  Fill with salt water, cap with lids, and secure to deck (wash cycle).  Find 10 knots of wind and some seas and let the boat’s motion agitate the laundry for two days.  Drain; fill buckets with precious fresh water; lids on – same boats conditions for two days (rinse cycle).  Drain and use the 80 feet of life lines along the perimeter of the boat to hang and dry the laundry. Voila!

So the next time you are frustrated with the pile of laundry you are stuffing into to your Maytag please think of us and our two-bucket washing machine!

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Epilogue – The only fatality we’ve had so far were a pair of socks Jen peeled off her feet during a long passage around the Gulf of Tehauntepec.  The odor that overcame the cockpit was so pungent she quickly came to the conclusion that there was no hope in revving her socks and tossed them overboard.  Ah life in the tropics …. full of new experiences!

 This is our upgraded automatic washing machine!

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