Its a wash out...

31st July
 
The challenges of living on Nandji can get rather annoying at times. Don’t get me wrong by that statement. I love living on Nandji and the life style we have chosen, but the downside to living on a boat is that the housework basically doubles. For someone who hates washing the clothes, you could see how this might affect me. We spend I reckon an extra 50% more time doing simple household chores then we did before.
 
Today was a day where we decided to spend the morning, preparing the house to start the week a fresh. A morning I thought… It is now 7:30pm and we have finally hung up the last load of clothes washing. Now I think that is a little outrageous. Normally for example, (I speak for myself here) if your at home in your house, you pick up the small mountain of dirty clothes you have thrown into the laundry during week. A quick 5 minute sort and a load is in the machine while you disappear to do nothing… That is roughly how it went. These days on Nandji, washing the clothes is a little different. If you have read earlier blogs about the washing, then you would know that Bonita normally hand washes the clothes. However, not doing such task for a week, things pile up quickly. So the decision of using the washing machines was the answer.
 
We had been building that pile of dirty clothes for a while now and putting off the mammoth task that lied ahead to clean the pricks. But today was the day and determination was at an all time standard level of not keen. However unless Airlie beach was happy to see our bare butts walking around town, it was time to clean. The wash basket was jammed full and some how zipped closed ready for the journey. The journey involves…
 
Getting the clothes basket up the stairs to the cockpit, over the chairs and dragged to the stern. Place the basket on the edge of Nandji and jump into the tender. Start the tender motor and click it into gear so the tender is ramming Nandji. This helps to keep the tender still and close to Nandji, hopefully making life easier. You then stretch out and drag the 20kg jammed pack cloths basket into the tender and hope it lands in the boat and you stay there to. After successfully completing this, it’s a short 5 minute fang to the yacht club. Park and tie up the tender. If the tide is high, this task is simple as the water is deep enough to access the entire length of the floating pontoon jetty. If the tide is low, it becomes a game of pushing along the mud bottom with an oar and then barging and climbing over all the other tenders that are gathered at the end of the jetty. So high tide is best. Once moored, out comes that basket of filth and slammed onto the floating jetty. You scramble out of the tender, say hello to the other yachty that is standing there watching all this unfold, pick up the basket of stink and carry it towards the lonely washing machine and drier. This is a 60m struggle across the front lawn of the club, in clear view of all the patrons on the balcony enjoying the free entertainment. The washing machine is hopefully vacant and you are ready to rumble.
 
So what takes five minutes in a house, is a good half hour on Nandji and that is only the beginning of this story. As you can now predict, those clothes once washed need to be dried. Unless you stand around at the yacht club for the hour it takes to wash, a guesstamit, (prediction by guessing) of time passed is the answer. You cruise back to the yacht club in the tender to remove the wet and hopefully clean clothes and place them in the drier, then put another load on. Cruise back to Nandji again to go do some other house chore that Bonita has waiting for me. Another guess of completion time and back you go again in the tender.
 
The journey to collect is always an interesting one. Are the clothes dry from that drier or wet. Of course they are wet. As the machine costs 3 big ones for a certain amount of time that is never long enough, you pile the half wet clothes in one garbage bag and the wet ones in another. Drag them across that lawn, down the floating pontoon, into the tender, across the ocean, up Nandji stern, over the seats and down the stairs. Succesfully negotiating it is now time to hang these pricks all around the house.
 
It is like a kids cubby house in here!! Anyway, that was part of my Sunday. Hope you were more successful in completing your tasks. By the way, I hate doing the dishes to. At least they can be done on the boat...