People ask all sorts of questions when they’re considering signing on board Picton Castle as a trainee. One we’ve been hearing a lot lately is about laundry. How do trainees wash their clothes on the voyage?
There is no washing machine on board, so any laundry you do on the ship needs to be done by hand. Because we do our best to conserve fresh water, the washing and rinsing is done in salt water, with a final rinse in fresh water.
Salt water soap is on the packing list, laundry is primarily what you’ll use it for. You can buy salt water soap at camping and outdoors stores. Alternately, we’ve found that many kinds of lemon dishwashing liquids also foam up in salt water and can be used for laundry.
Captain Moreland says the best way is to put your laundry in a bucket of salt water and soap and let it sit overnight. The next day, give it a light scrub, then rinse in salt water. Your final rinse can be in fresh water, to get the salt out.
To dry your laundry, we have laundry lines hanging over the well deck. Depending on wind conditions, you may need a number of clothespins to make sure your favourite t-shirt doesn’t blow overboard as it dries! We generally clear the laundry lines every evening before it gets dark so they’re empty overnight.
Alternately, many of the ports we visit have laundry services ashore, so some people on board will take their laundry ashore and drop it off on their day off duty, then pick up their nice clean, dry, folded clothes before returning to the ship.
