Time to air some dirty laundry

Not kidding. Thursday was laundry day on Indigo Lady. Let me back up a little, though, and catch you up on our excursions.

After a walk on Hurricane Island Tuesday morning we cruised over to Vinalhaven to drop our friends at the ferry, then we returned to Hurricane for the night. Wednesday we cruised into the Fox Island Thoroughfare and anchored in North Haven Harbor and went ashore to check out the wee town. They have a great little market with local fresh produce which we made use of both Wednesday and Friday. They also have a brewery, which we of course stopped into for a drink.

We had planned to leave for another spot on Thursday, but I connected with a friend on Vinalhaven and they would join us that evening for dinner aboard Lady. So now we’re back to laundry…

Since we had a sunny and unexpected additional day at anchor, we did chores. The boys tended to some mechanical issues while the ladies did the laundry. I know, typical sexist division of labor, but I still have to learn our systems, and if you saw how cramped our engine room is, you’d probably opt to do the laundry too!

We actually have a washing machine on board. It’s a tiny machine, but better than hand washing. One chamber for wash, switch to the other to spin. Boy does that side spin the water out! It’s mounted in the fourth head (Dave removed the toilet) and we fill it from the hose in that sink. We run an extension cord to the adjacent cabin (which used to be the fourth bedroom and is now our storage/workshop) to run it. Amen for solar power- we’re electricity rich! The ‘dryer’ is the sun- we hang the laundry on the life lines.

This was our first use of the washer (aside of a quick test in our bathtub back home). It works well. We are still confined to 160 gallons of fresh water in our storage tanks, so we did two loads per fill of the machine (not ideal; it was a bit gray after the first load). Once we install the water maker in August we’ll be water rich too, and laundry will even easier.

After that, Mom baked banana bread. We tidied the living space, and I cleaned the surface of counters and vacuumed. Mom & Dad made dinner (chicken cacciatore!) so Dave and I could dinghy over to the Vinalhaven thoroughfare dock to pick up my friend and his wife. They brought a yummy salad- fresh veggies!!! We had a lovely visit, and a productive day.