Laundry

A reader on a women’s sailing group I’m part of asked if it was possible to sail the South Pacific without washing laundry in a bucket. Laundry was much harder for me than being on a boat for 24 days straight, cooking underway, or seasickness, and something I stressed out about far more than the weather, ships, or squalls. I got over my stress about laundry by finding other people, and sometimes machines, to do my washing for me. It was expensive and it was worth it. ...

Mo’orea and Huahine are my favorite islands in the Societies and close to my favorite in French Polynesia. They both have a laid back air and, as much as any of these heavily visited islands, seem less fatigued by the demands of tourism than I would have expected. All that being true, what really made these spots shine was the social life. After the Rendevouz lots of boats hung around and made their ways, more or less together, through the remaining islands. In Cooks bay a few of us centered our daily activities around the Bali Hai Club. We sat by the pool while the kids ran and swam, made new friends, and generally took it easy for almost a week. We even got a rental car for an afternoon and toured the island. ...

I noticed on facebook today that many of my friend’s kids were dressed in fresh new clothes with hair and teeth brushed. Ruby and Olive weren’t actually all that bad considering they had a shower just yesterday (showering when you don’t have one of your own can be a little more of an adventure). When we went out for the morning I decided to drag along Tucker’s good camera to snap a few shots of our first day, and what a beautiful day it was. We had sun and warmth starting in the morning and lasting until evening. Ruby came home from swimming lessons after 6 without wearing her winter hat. Remarkable! Here’s why I’m glad I didn’t send my daughter to school again today. Both kids have fairy dust necklaces (though Olive lost her fairy dust in the bilge). Ruby offered Olive a wish on her fairy dust every five steps so we could make it down the dock in a reasonable amount of time. Yep, stopping every five steps was an improvement. You might think that the B dock was a straight line from our boat to the shore, but for the kids each and every finger has something to explore and they surely can’t be done until they know every boat name (and why they were named that); see every shell left by a sea bird; compare how each boat ties their dock lines; count how many boats have and anchor or two, or not; why one boat has a pirate flag; why someone is cleaning a certain way; why someone left their hose on; ….it could go on and it does, and we needed to get down the dock to go on a bike ride. We managed to drop off the PFDs and sun hats in Tucker’s truck and trade them for bikes and helmets and then they were off. But a bike ride is easily interrupted by a stick that begs to be thrown into the water. That was the end of the bike ride because Olive needed to head back to the bathroom. Then it was time to play on the grass. Ruby’s tag game seemed to be chase Olive and then push her over. She’d get up, she’d chase, she’d push (hard) and eventually she didn’t want to play that anymore. Ruby got mad at me for asking her to be gentle and stormed off to play in the mud at the edge of the grass. Olive joined and and they got pretty darned muddy. I didn’t think it was a terribly big deal because we had access to bathrooms and 64 faucets and hoses between the lawn and our boat that I could rinse them off in. And again it was a remarkably warm day out so we could even string their clothes on the lifelines to dry. ...

Back in our wild youth we had this neighbor (Douglas Robbins) who was getting into producing documentaries. Before he moved on he made this video staring (amongst others) us. In case you don’t know by watching, its farcical… though Vick can make 16 different muffins without processed flour.