Laundry Days

After wishing Auntie Susie off to the airport, we returned to the boat and made a list of TO DOs, as we had a couple of days before Bob and Carol joined the Nahanni V crew. Our laundry had been piling up since Montserrat and the bags had become tripping hazards. 

Loaded with laundry

We discovered that it is tricky to find a place to do your own laundry ashore in Antigua; it seems that the drop-off service is the norm. Many larger boats have their own laundry machines, or just prefer to spend the day at the beach and arrive back to clean and folded laundry. We checked out a few laundry services and found that it was going to take a chunk out of our budget to get our six big loads done.

Prices at the only place that it was possible to do our own wash

After taking two loads of essentials in to be washed and folded at the lovely laundry service in Nelson's dockyard, we revisited our old practice of laundry: washing by foot. John and Simon borrowed four 20 litre jugs from a friendly neighbouring boat and made a few trips to the nearby marina to get water. Meanwhile, Wavey and I got our laundry operation going. 

We donned our bathing suits, filled a large basin with soapy water, cranked up the tunes, and jumped in. Several songs of dancing on the wash did the trick following by the same time with the rinse water. In two days, we managed to wash four loads including bedding using 80 litres of water. We dried it by stringing it out in the rigging, and keeping an eye it didn't blow away.

We only had one fatality: I dropped one of Wavey's favourite pajama tops overboard, when it started to rain and we hurriedly brought things in. No one was going to fetch it in the dirty water of the bay, so we waved it goodbye. I think it joined my favourite towel that blew off the line back in 2002.

By March 5, the boat was shipshape and we all had clean clothes again. Donning our best duds, we hopped on a bus to St. John's, the capital of Antigua to meet Bob and Carol at the airport.


More to come on our visit to Antigua!