Watermakers - the difference between ‘Camping’ and ‘Cruising’! (Thursday 11/12/09)

Is Windfall camping or cruising? When we purchased our boat back in 2006, she came with an older PUR35 water maker, which converts sea water into potable drinking water... one gallon every 45 minutes. We have been relatively happy with the quality of the water, although the output is a bit too conservative for a family of four with a medium size dog. Drinking water is not an issue (that's the cruising part)... our PUR35 makes plenty of drinking water for our family. It’s just... well, everything else (and that would be the camping part)!

We’ve met a number of kid boats (boats with kids) that have newer systems that run 30-50 gallons an hour! What an improvement... not only would clean laundry be an every-other-day luxury, but we could ALL take fresh water showers EVERY day! We could wash down the boat now and then... instead of almost never. And instead of salt water, I would use fresh water to wash the dishes, boil potatoes and eggs, and flush the head! And, when someone forgot to turn the handle on the faucet to the ‘off’ position completely... flooding gallons of our precious fresh water back into the ocean faster than we can make it... (CAROLYNE!)... Jim and I wouldn’t loose our heads because they spun wildly off our shoulders at the discovery.
NOTE: Jim and I had barely recovered before... yes, it happened again!

Why haven’t we upgraded our PUR35, you may ask yourself? The cost! The figures we’ve run across for a new system have been shocking... average cost is about $5000 - $6000 USD!!!! We have also looked into building our own system. The cost is still running approximately $2000 - $3000 USD for parts. It just seems so outrageous and we don’t want to dip that deep into our cruising kitty. In our minds, $6000 shortens our cruising by half a year.

So, at this point in time we are still not fully committed to paying for any watermaker upgrades. Jim works diligently at maintaining our PUR35, replacing rubber O-rings and seals and gaskets and such... pickling completely when not in use for 7 or more days. Why not too long ago, we panicked when our fresh water output ceased... no water at all! Jim thoroughly investigated... cause and effect... something must be obstructing the feed flow. Sure enough! A 1.5" fish (Goby, I believe) had ventured up the through-hull and gotten stuck in the tubing. Jim jumped overboard with a metal skewer (the kind we use for shishkabobs) and helped the victim find its way to the other side... as his little fishy spirit had already gone there. What a relief that it was just a little problem! Positive outlook? Now that's definitely "cruising"!