The laundry question comes up in every pre-boarding conversation eventually. Not dramatically: nobody arrives at the idea of a five-year circumnavigation on an 80-foot catamaran and thinks primarily about the washing. But it arrives, because the practical details of living aboard are part of what people need to understand before they commit to the experience, and laundry is a practical detail that daily life depends on in ways that most people have arranged to not think about.
The answer is simpler than most people expect.
The Machines
The Eighty2 has a washing machine and a tumble dryer. Full-size domestic machines, not the under-spec marine versions that smaller boats fit into awkward spaces and that produce results that are technically clean in the way that most compromises are technically something. The machines are available to members and the stewardess manages the laundry service as part of her daily routine. You leave your things and they come back clean and folded. This is the whole of the laundry situation on port days and days at anchor with sufficient power generation.
The tumble dryer does the heavy work: bedding, towels, the thicker items that the marine environment loads with salt and humidity and that take more than a day to air-dry. For the clothing that makes up the majority of what members bring, the dryer is rarely needed for more than a cycle before the sun takes over.
The Sun
In the Mediterranean and the tropics, which is the majority of the Naora route, the sun dries light clothing faster than any machine. A swimsuit hung on the rail after the morning swim is dry before the eleven o’clock meal. A t-shirt washed by hand in the cabin sink and hung on the lifeline is dry within the hour if the sun is out, which in the Gokova Gulf in June and the Tuamotu in August and the Caribbean in January it essentially always is.
This changes the relationship with laundry in a specific and useful way. The sail wardrobe, the light clothing that makes up most of what members bring and most of what they wear, has essentially a zero-lag turnaround in the tropics: worn in the morning, washed at lunch, dry by the afternoon. The concept of packing a week’s worth of each item because laundry is a once-a-week event does not apply on the Eighty2 in warm latitudes. Pack less than you think you need. The sun is the fastest dryer on the rout
What This Means for Packing
Three swimsuits rather than seven. Four t-shirts rather than fourteen. Two pairs of shorts rather than eight. The rest of the bag space is for books. The laundry infrastructure aboard means that the quantity of clothing required for a month at sea is a fraction of what most people pack for a week’s holiday, because the holiday assumes no laundry capability and the boat assumes daily capability in the most efficient conditions available. Pack light. Pack merino where possible, because merino dries fast and smells less than synthetic after a day of wearing. Pack the books you actually want to read. Leave the rest behind.
