Clothing Aboard

   Clothes. Not the most aquatic topic, yet, being a liveaboard and having to be presentable every once in awhile (a.k.a. work a 9-5) means dealing with clothes and clothing storage aboard. In this case I'm not talking about clothing and cruising, but keeping clothes aboard at the home marina.

   For every liveaboard friend I have there seems to be different way to deal with clothes, but there seems to be two popular methods. The first is keeping some or all of your clothes off the boat, whether in a space at work or in your vehicle in the marina parking lot. This makes a lot of sense for a lot of people - their clothes stay fresh and dry and many people shower in the marina showers - close to the car and parking lot. Quite a few folks bike to work as well, nothing like having clean, wrinkle-free clothes in a locker when you get there.

   The second popular method is to keep clothes aboard, limit what you have, and wash them regularly. This one sounds pretty straightforward, but getting rid of enough clothes to fit can be a challenge (cough-captain wifey-cough). Different spots on your boat require different methods to keep things dry and moist-air free (a.k.a. mold & mildew). I know one liveaboard who washes all of his clothes every two weeks no matter what - whether he wears all of them them or not.

   We tend to fall in to this second group - get through your clothes in a couple weeks so that everything gets washed. Dress clothes that we don't wear that much? Summer clothes (we don't have that many since we live in the Northwest:)? We keep them in a storage bag in the trunk of the car. Surely there are some interesting liveaboard keep-your-clothing-fresh ideas that we haven't tried yet…let us know in the comment section!
   ~Paul & Amber   ETC