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| Delivery Van Cargo Selfie |
A boat is an organism existing in a harsh environment. The sun, sea, and salt air combine to create an unforgiving, corrosive stew that eventually destroys all. Kirstin and I view ourselves as antibodies that attempt to keep our home livable (OK, and luxurious) against these forces. Thus, we are constantly fixing fiberglass, aluminum, electronics, sails, upholstery, machinery, plumbing, etc. Waiting until something breaks doesn't always work, as we frequently sail in places that barely have clean water, let alone the shops and stores that seem to be on every street corner in the USA's exurbs.
So, our clothes washer (yes, we have one on L'ORIENT !!!) is 14 years old......original to the boat. As we're considering expanding our sailing area to places like Colombia and Panama in coming years, having it break in a remote place would be annoying and not consistent with L'ORIENT's dignity. Time for replacement, and what better place than Martinique (our washing machine is French as well.....thus 220 volts/50 hertz).
Our mission- replace the clothes washer. We get the names of three potential places; Hyper-U (a mixture of Walmart and Whole Foods, if you can image that), Darty (an appliance store), and Guy Vieules (try pronouncing that; "I'd like to buy a consonant, Alex")
We dinghy to the pier in Fort de France and head to Hyper-U. We meet Xavier, a nice kid who ends up not being so detail oriented. We find that the only machine they sell that fits our boat is on sale tomorrow. With the help of Google Translate and basic English we ask "Xavier, how many of these do you have in stock?" He assures us that there are 20. OK. We go back to the boat with a massive load of groceries ($40 cab ride round trip) and return to see Xavier the next day. "I'm sorry, we have none in stock" comes out of Xavier's mouth. Now $60 in cab rides lighter, we are back to square one. We walk upstairs in the mall to Guy Vieules and don't see anything special there. That leaves Darty, a 20 minute walk across the expressway from the mall. So we hoof it there, using Google Maps to walk across major highways, through parking lots, etc.
At Darty, we find our preferred machine and establish it is in stock due to the magic of Google Translate. We pay for it and get the receipt. Good. Problem - the machine apparently isn't actually at Darty; it's at the Darty warehouse.........a 30 minute walk the other way. So off we walk across highways, fields, and parking lots. We arrive there and finally are united with our new Thomson machine.
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| Wow - this thing is pretty heavy |
We ask the Darty warehouse staff to call a cab for us for the ride back to the dinghy, now about 5 miles away. The staff are incredulous. "You are going to try to dinghy this machine to a boat and lift it aboard?" It weights 60 kilograms, or about 130 lbs. They end up being so curious and amused about how this will work that they offer to take us in their delivery van..........in the back (there are no seats).
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| Special Delivery |
So, we're loaded like cargo into the back of a windowless delivery van and we drive to the dinghy dock. The delivery guy is still half not believing us, but we dolly the heavy machine over to the quay and load it in our dinghy..........roughly doubling our dinghy's weight. He's both laughing and visibly scared as we slowly drive away.
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| Slow going on the dinghy |
Now the fun part. We tie rope all over the machine and Kirstin hoists it up to the deck while I guide it from the dinghy. This was made more dangerous by the ferry traffic......generating 2 ft waves that rocked boat, dinghy, and washing machine every five minutes or so.......almost to the point of capsizing. But eventually, success!!! It is amazing how much weight Kirstin can lift when washing clothes in a bucket for two years is the alternative.
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| Getting ready to winch it up |
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| Success - Sorry no action shot while cranking it up! |
After it was aboard, installing it was easy.
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| I wish these directions were in English |
What wasn't easy was the old machine still on the boat....about 150 lbs. Because we both know there was no way we'd get it off the boat in one piece without hurting us or damaging L'ORIENT, I took my tools out and took it apart.......piece by piece. Three hours later, the old machine was in semi-manageable pieces.........kind of interesting to see how it works.
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| Who knew this thing had so many parts |
Ta-da..............we have our new washing machine; the old one is disposed of properly, and fun and adventure was had by all. To you land-lubbers: see what you're missing? If buying a washing machine is this much fun, image what giggles we have sailing in a tropical storm.
