It is 0300, the boat is at anchor, and the fire alarm goes off in the laundry. The dryer is running, it has been running almost continuously for eleven days of back-to-back charter, and nobody has taken the lint trap out of the housing since the season started. Tumble dryer lint is one of the most common sources of fire on a yacht. Everything in this lesson exists to stop that alarm from ever sounding.
Workflow: dirty to clean, one direction
The laundry is a flow, and the flow must never double back on itself.
Intake → sort → pre-treat → wash → dry → finish → fold/hang → distribute.
- Physical separation of dirty and clean. A dirty basket never sits on a clean folding surface.
- Sort on four axes: colour, fibre, soil level, construction.
- Separate guest, crew, galley and deck items completely. Deck rags never touch guest linen — not in a machine, not on a surface, not in a basket.
- Pre-treat at the sorting point, before the item enters the machine, and never dry a stain you have not cleared.
Machine care
| Interval | Task |
|---|---|
| Every cycle | Clean the dryer lint filter — every single cycle, no exceptions. Wipe the door seal and glass |
| Daily | Leave washer doors and the detergent drawer open to dry; wipe the drum; empty and wipe the washer filter trap |
| Weekly | Run a hot maintenance/service wash (empty, 90 C or a machine cleaner) to clear biofilm and detergent residue; clean the detergent drawer |
| Monthly | Check and clear the dryer duct and vent, not just the filter. Lint escapes past every filter and packs the duct |
| Quarterly / per yard schedule | Descale, check hoses, seals, drain pump, mounts, belts and electrical connections. Log it in the PMS |
Ventilation, humidity and fire
- A laundry with poor extraction becomes a humidity trap: mould in the deckhead, damp linen, corrosion, and a rising dew point through the accommodation. Extraction must run whenever the dryers run.
- Condenser dryers need their condenser cleaned and their water tank emptied; vented dryers need a clear, short, rigid duct.
- Never run dryers unattended overnight if the yacht policy prohibits it — many do.
- Never tumble dry anything contaminated with oil, sunscreen or solvent. Oil-contaminated fabric can self-heat and spontaneously ignite in a hot drum or in a warm pile of folded laundry.
- Know where the laundry fire detection, the isolation switch and the nearest extinguisher are, and that the space is included in the yacht fire plan and drills.
Onboard Notes
- Overloading a drum is the classic yacht error: it cleans badly, rinses badly, strains the bearings and, in a seaway, puts a badly balanced load into a machine on soft mounts.
- Motion matters. Secure everything on flat surfaces before you leave the laundry; irons, bottles and full baskets become missiles in a swell.
- Keep a running log of machine hours and faults. The yard period is when you get machines fixed properly; a fault you never wrote down is a fault nobody will fix.
- If you smell hot lint or scorching, stop the machine, isolate it and report it immediately. Do not open a hot, smoking drum and feed it oxygen.