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Hanging "dress clothes", suits and such, in the boat

17K views 58 replies 25 participants last post by  sloss321 
#1 ·
A big impediment I have right now to living aboard is the fact that both me and my girlfriend are professionals, and we need more than the usual hanging locker. I wear a suit every day, and I can't reduce the amount of shirts/suits that I have, at least not by enough to fit in a standard little hanging locker.

Does anyone have any creative ideas for hanging up dress clothes in a boat? And for how to secure them underway, so they don't all get wrinkled after a daysail?

I am currently looking at boats in the 30-37' range to liveaboard. I don't mind doing some minor interior carpentry. I am hoping to get a boat with an aft cabin but I'm not certain about that yet...
 
#2 · (Edited)
We are also two professionals living aboard. We have a forty foot boat with 2 cabins. each cabin has a hanging locker. My wife gets the bigger locker. My locker in the aft cabin was actually a shelved locker. I removed the shelving and installed a hanger rod. We keep this cabin cool to prevent condensation in the winter. We run a 110v dehumidifier at the forward head which keeps the boat fairly dry. You will not have a problem with smelly clothes if the boat is not smelly and you keep your lockers well ventilated. We shower on shore year round. Me at the marina and my wife at her gym across the street.

My locker is about 2' wide. I can fit 7 pairs of dress pants and 10 shirts in it. The dress pants stay wrinkle free but the shirts do not. I iron a shirt each morning before work. Jackets I leave at the office. I use a standard iron with a tabletop ironing board in the salon.

My wife only stores clothes for the particular season in her locker. Others stay in our storage unit and get swapped out each season. She is not a shoe person so she has minimized the number of shoes she owns. Although she could keep her shoes at work because she does not walk the cobble and brick sidewalks here in her dress shoes anyhow.

Our boat is slipped about 4 blocks from either of our offices so it is easy to pick up a jacket if I have to travel.

Do you have the ability to store clothes at work?

Get creative. You will find a solution. This is what living aboard is all about. Adapting and minimizing.
 
#3 ·
It's not only wrinkle free you need to be worried about... it's also moisture, smells, possibly mildew etc. I think this is a problem generally for office types that choose to liveaboard.

We keep things in large zip loc bags if we want them fresh and dry, but this is mainly guest/spare bedding and linens and such, we don't liveaboard full time and when we do it's mostly summer conditions and in any event suits are not in my repertoire anyway... I don't imagine the ziploc bag idea would do for you. There are also vacuum bagging options to reduce bulk, but again same issue. It would work to minimize space taken for undergarments and such, perhaps.

I suspect for the space you're talking about you'll need to focus on the upper range of your hunt.. few 30 footers will be able to provide what you need.

We've also noticed that most full time liveaboards (in the PNW, anyhow) will use shore facilities for showering to avoid the humidity in the boat. Inconvenient but overall the better choice long term.

One boat that does come to mind with the space you'll need, often priced in the 37 foot range with a spacious aft cabin is the mid 80s Hunter 40.. it has a double walkthrough to the aft cabin, one of which might be sacrificed for extra storage/closet space. Big boat, though, when it comes to all the other stuff (moorage, rigging, paint, etc...)
 
#4 ·
It souns like you are in a marina and don't move around.

If you go sailing you need to ditch that hanging storage, unless you can fill it up to the point where nothing moves.

Why CHAFE!

A 24 hour sail can wear holes in your suit / shirts / pants / or in my case my kilt. Ask me how I know this.
 
#5 ·
TQA, we do live at a marina but are very active. We sail just about every weekend from May to Thanksgiving with a 2 week cruise in late August. Neither of us has experienced any chafe. I have pants in my locker that are going on two years and still strong.

Both of our lockers are fairly snug although I usually have 5 shirts in the laundry when we sail weekends.
 
#6 ·
I must wear a suit to work. I always figure if I move aboard I will have to buy a mini-van, SUV or something similar to hang the suits/shirts/ties.

As it stands now, I spend weekends in season on a mooring. I leave a set of work clothes hanging in the truck for Monday morning.

I could probably go the sports jacket route, but, at this point it might not be so good for my career.
 
#8 ·
I must wear a suit to work. I always figure if I move aboard I will have to buy a mini-van, SUV or something similar to hang the suits/shirts/ties.
Yes, this is what I did during my time as a Washington bureaucrat, and it worked very well. Make sure you put something in the windows to prevent sun fading the shoulders of the clothing you hang. Even my liveaboard neighbor, a judge, kept his workday clothes in a van (robes in his office).

Another thing I did was pick all my clothes for one season in one set of colors - say, black, white, gray, red, pink for winter; blue, tan, white for summer - so that I only needed one set of accessories & shoes to go with everything. Not having to keep navy, brown, AND black socks, shoes, purses, etc really helped save space.
 
#7 ·
I discovered a few neat tricks while storing hanging clothing on my previous boat, a Catalina 27. Obviously, space is always quite limited, which is something I can never seem to get through to my loving wife. If she were making a long voyage, the entire boat would become a hanging closet/locker. Guys don't usually need much more than a two-foot-wide hanging locker and a drawer or two--that's it!

Boats, unfortunately, have their own, unique odors--usually somewhat musty. Much of this is due to a lack of air circulation. I overcame this problem by installing a couple vents in the hanging locker, one near the bottom, and another near the top. The one at the top will chimney the air through the locker, but the volume of air was not sufficient to keep things as odorless as I would have liked. Therefore, I added a small, 12-volt, computer fan to the top vent. The fan draws very little electricity, the volume of air it moves is incredible and when the boat is open you can switch it off.

Vacuum bags specifically designed for hanging clothing are wonderful to reduce the amount of space required for clothing, but they do have their drawbacks--the clothes are always wrinkled. When I'm working, which is sometimes 7 days a week, I wear black trousers, a satin shirt, matching tie and a silk vest. I'm an entertainer. I sing and play an arranger keyboard and in this business every day is dress-up day. (Gotta' look good for the ladies!) Therefore, my biggest challenge for the upcoming winter will be to find a steam-iron that runs on 12 volts so I can press my shirts and slacks. There must be one out there somewhere. ;)

Good luck,

Gary :cool:
 
#9 ·
Therefore, my biggest challenge for the upcoming winter will be to find a steam-iron that runs on 12 volts so I can press my shirts and slacks. There must be one out there somewhere. ;)

Good luck,

Gary :cool:
Maybe an antique store? Have you investigated the old-fashioned irons that you heat on the stove? No electricity at all?
 
#14 ·
Not to hijack this thread, but when I was living aboard, going to work in my office, and needed to iron I would run an extension cord onto the dock and avoid all the inverter, 12v, stove top iron issues. I found I didn't really need to iron when I was anchored out and the dock had 120v power connections that I could reach with an extension cord.

Just a thought.

As for keeping away the boat smell (never real bad but still slightly noticeable in an office) I kept my jackets, ties, and dress shirts in my vehicle when they came back from the cleaner's and since I typically showered at the marina on my way in it wasn't inconvenient to grab them and dress off the boat in the marina facilities. It made a significant difference to quality of life when i moved from one marina with rather sparse accommodations to one with very nice restrooms and changing areas.

One thing I learned the hard way is to get the clothes out of the locker if you decide to deep clean the bilge. I cleaned the bilge and then tossed a bromine tablet into it thinking it would keep anything from growing in there. Certainly kept the bilge free from growth and odors but left a distinct "swimming pool" smell in my clothes. Live and learn.
 
#15 ·
We have a set of bunks, where the upper bunk will fold down to make a couch. It's just a fancy set of pipe berths. I've often thought, if we moved aboard full time, the top bunk could be removed or kept down and a hanging rod put in. Maybe close it in with fabric.

Big problem with clothing that stays aboard full time is odor. Our boat does not smell !! However, when we bring foulies home for he winter, we can tell. It's faint enough that the odor disappears after a few days at home. Nevertheless, your office mates may notice.

I have wondered whether some Kanberra gel inside a hanging locker is a good idea. May try it this year.
 
#17 ·
nah sorry but given the money you save by living on board, spend some of it having your clothes laundered and ironed. The very idea of daily ironing on board (unless of course we are talking over 50 odd feet) is simply ludicrous.
 
#20 ·
Wrong and wrong.

Many do not save a lot of money by living aboard although I do because I eliminated a car and a mortgage. Your expenses are generally the same. The issue is not who irons your clothes but where to store them. Storing a freshly ironed shirt on a boat is a bigger challenge. Taking out a clean shirt from cramped storage will require ironing whether or not someone else already did it.

Paying someone to do something I can easily do myself is what I would consider ludicrous.
 
#29 ·
I lived aboard with a suit and tie job for about three years. I rotated through about 12 suits. Each hung individually in a suit bag I got in (I think) 3-packs from WalMart that were quite inexpensive. The bags protected the suits from dust and chafe.

Shirts I had laundered and folded. That worked great.

Ties took some work. Ultimately I folded them in half and then in half again before rolling them up. They went in one of two "tie drawers." When I moved aboard I downsized from 400 ties to about 80. *grin*



Tackle smells at the source. Scrub the bilge. Make sure you don't have any fuel leaks. Follow Peggie Hall's guidance on checking sanitary hoses for saturation and replace them early. There isn't anything wrong with cedar, but masking or otherwise covering up smells is not nearly as good as avoiding them in the first place.
 
#21 ·
If you look at my Avatar, that's the outfit I wear to work, or something similar. Tonight I'll be entertaining about 125 people, mostly seniors who love to dance, they'll be decked out in their finest clothes. For some of these events I have to wear a tuxedo, but for most I do not.

Now, when I sail south this winter (health permitting) to the Florida Keys, my performance attire will change a bit. Hopefully, a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, dress slacks and boat shoes will work out in the Tiki Bars at the marinas. For the private parties, though, it's the same outfits I wear up north.



Still trying to find a 12-volt steam iron, but so far, Google hasn't turned up anything other than high-wattage and high-voltage irons. I have one of them at home. Shore power may be the only viable solution for ironing the duds.

Cheers,

Gary :cool:
 
#22 · (Edited)
Dumb question, but have you considered doing it the old-fashioned way and just heating the iron on your stove?
Think back to the 30's, when an "iron" was simply that- a flat, cast-iron with a handle on it.

Edit- Sorry Gary, I see where this has already been addressed.
 
#25 ·
Maybe a golf shirt with a clip on bow tie would give you an office image that sez to all,'I am what I am' At least it solves the ironing issue Really hard to control iron temp with a propane burner, Needs a good woman's touch and a wood stove. Lots of water sprinkled on shirt and iron to dry will help prevent those unsightly scorch marks.
 
#27 ·
Its a bit of a nightmare, I agree, but I use an electric iron, and it works, but had a female friend, who went with us sailing for 5 weeks last year, all in the Med, and told her it was going to be hot, not too many clothes, not too many bags etc! The boat was like a sailing clothes store, needles to say, I never asked her to come onboard again.
I keep 3 suits with me now, and 6 shirts, and when I can they dont ever get worn, but hanging space no matter how big or small the craft is, is always going to be a problem.
My daughter is now just turned 15 and I noticed that some or her things are now in my locker, because in her cabin she's run out of room, I miss the days when she was happy to be in a T shirt and pair of shorts lol.
 
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