Airing (clean) Laundry....

After a short spell away from writing on the blog, (the fire in Squalicum marina left me a little spare on words for a few weeks)... I ponder what I wanted to write about next.

While back on Kwaietek, I set to hand-washing my laundry from the past week onboard Zodiac. I think about potential topics that I might expound upon.  Certainly there has to be something eventful and terribly nautical to write about. Nothing really sparks my interest.  I fall into the zen of scrubbing the clothes and then rinsing and wringing them out one by one. I hang the pants and shirts over Kwaietek's life-lines; clothes-pinning them so as not to find them drifting in my neighbor's slip. The more delicate items, I take up into the salon and string them up on a make-shift clothes line running fore and aft. Lucky Jack glares at me as I set about this task--the sunny spot in the salon is directly in the drip-zone.

It occurs to me as I finish this chore, that it is a subject worth writing about. Not for being at a loss for topics, but because it becomes a very satisfying task. It takes me back to what life had been like growing up on our farm. Simple tasks that slowed the rate of a fast-paced life somewhat and gave one a certain appreciation of what one had and what one could do. Sure, throwing the laundry into a machine, splashing some detergent on it and walking away would have been much easier, but less "present".

I smell the soap and chlorine as I hang the clothes on the lines...I enjoy the scent of sunshine drying laundry. It reminds me of helping my grandma hang the laundry when I was a little girl. I loved her baggy gingham apron with it's over-sized pockets that held a never ending supply of wooden clothespins.

Now, I am draping my laundry over the life-lines and reaching for the same type of wooden pins to secure the clothes. Oddly, it makes our old forestry boat seem much more homey and cozy--if not quite nautical and maritime-esque.

And so I find, that even the most mundane items in the life of a sailor are worth appreciating and taking a moment to expound upon.

I am glad I get to live on a boat.