JollyDogs water system 14 Jul 19

16º 30.395s 145º 27.409w

Sun Jul 14 2019

JollyDogs has a water maker. Rain in the Sea of Cortez is rare, a bit less rare along the Pacific coast at least as far down as Zijuatanejo where we sailed. If one is willing to hump jugs of water to their boat, there’s places that water is available, but it can be a bit challenging to find on the Baja side. Careful water rationing and a bunch of extra jugs on deck will allow a crew to get by; our pals Patrick and Celine on SV Voila didn’t have a water maker and they spent loads of time in remote parts of the Northern Sea.

In 2014 after much research we selected a CruiseRO water maker, a completely manual unit - zero automation. Kind of like owning an older car with a carburetor, no electronic ignition to troubleshoot. I like the unit, and I like Rich and Charlie, the founders of the company. Rich and his family cruised Mexico on a sailboat for several years back when everyone had lead acid batteries on board. Every morning and every evening all the boats fired up their little Honda 2 kilowatt generators to charge their batteries. Rich and Charlie used that Honda generator as a design point, engineering their 30 gallon per hour water maker to run on AC power from the Honda which leaves enough extra power output to simultaneously run a 40 amp battery charger. It works a charm!

We installed a 2000 watt pure sine inverter in 2014. Our 920 watt solar array combined with our 800 amp/hour LiFeP04 battery bank would run the water maker just fine. When we were motoring along, entirely too common in Mexico, one of our custom 120 amp output alternators supplied enough power to run the water maker and still charge the batteries. Recall it was really SUNNY in Mexico, only the occasional cloud, and rarely any rain, so cleaning the solar panels was a mandatory task every few days. Bird crap and dust and salt. Gee whiz.

Not any more. It rains a lot here in French Polynesia so the solar panels stay sparkling clean. It’s cloudy on and off virtually every day. During our refit over the Winter we replaced our solar panels and upgraded the entire system; now we’ve got 4 panels, each with a separate Victron controller, for a total of 1440 watts. Rich once noted “nobody every complains they have too much solar”. I’m certainly not complaining, and really wish we had more, but JollyDogs has limited real estate and weight capacity. During the refit we replaced our older LiFeP04 cells with 16 spankin’ new CALB 180 amp hour cells (3.2 volts each) so we now have 720 amp hours of power. My objective was to have enough electrical storage capacity to get through nights while on passage or a couple or more cloudy days while on anchor. It’s actually worked out really well and we’ve never had to burn fossil fuel to keep our batteries up.

It is important to note that we run the engines when departing or arriving at an anchorage which always injects a bit of power back into the batteries, and sometimes in lousy sailing conditions when we really want to be somewhere close by we’ll just motor on over. That creates opportunities to run the water maker, get some charge into the batteries, and when we run the port engine we end up with a tank of hot water due to that engine’s cooling loop plumbing. Makes shaving and bathing a bit more pleasant, cheers Mrs. H up a lot.

We recently had to motor for several hours to get from the village at Fakarava down to Hirifa, the Southeast corner where we’ve been taking kite boarding lessons. JollyDogs has an enormous 700 liter fresh water tank and as we were expecting to be at Hirifa for at least a week and foul weather was forecast, I elected to completely fill the tank to exploit the excess power. All went well but after a couple of days in the anchorage while working on an electrical project I noted a puddle of water where none should be. Turns out our tank has cracked on the top surface, something that Seawind 1160’s are notorious for doing. When the tank is full water wants out, but at half a tank it’s OK unless rough seas cause enough sloshing to push a bit of water through the leaky spot.

I managed to reach Alan Hunt and Alec Waring, both Seawind 1160 owners who had some experience with the problem, and between them I’ve now got the factory repair procedure as well as numerous photos of the work being performed on 2 different boats. Doesn’t look fun, does look messy, and will require materials and tools we don’t possess. Looks like a project for our upcoming visit to Tahiti where most things yacht can be dealt with. We’ll add it to the list of other projects which mostly involve new canvas bits that will keep rain out of the saloon and cockpit. Funnily enough the Seawind factory instructions note that the tank cracking can occur when the tank is “over filled”. What? I reckon if they put a 700 liter tank on the boat then one should be able to fill it to 700 liters! In their cleverness, the company built and installed the tank as an integral part of the saloon structure, so it sees structural loading such as twisting and flexing that a simple bolt-on tank wouldn’t experience. Well shucks. Looks like they under-engineered this particular part of the design.

I recently noted a bit of a malfunction of our water maker, so emailed Rich and Charlie with comments and questions. True to form, they both responded within a few hours (gotta love that level of product support – they also answer the phone) and I made the adjustments recommended. We really didn’t need any fresh water, but our pals on SV Halcyon were running a bit low as they collect rain water and the weather has been spectacular the last few days. It wasn’t a particularly sunny day and our batteries were a bit down, but I craved a little “job satisfaction” and wanted to run the water maker for an hour or so to monitor the performance after the adjustment. The crew of Halcyon was delighted to supply about 120 liters of jugs and a little gasoline, so out came the Honda generator!

The water maker is back to its old self, Halcyon has water, JollyDogs batteries got a bit of a boost and the Honda got a much needed maintenance run. Yachtzee!

The more complex the system the more difficult to troubleshoot the inevitable malfunctions. Most water makers include proprietary parts that must come from the manufacturer, and they can be outrageously expensive. CruiseRO supplies a parts list with their water maker, arming the owner with the intel to source those parts anywhere. Their customer service is excellent and they’ll assist with troubleshooting over the phone. The prices for parts/spares and world-wide expedited shipping are so reasonable I don’t waste time shopping around. I think Rich and Charlie deserve a plug!

We hear horror stories about many of the more complex automated water makers. As much as possible the crew of JollyDogs respects the KISS principle. Keep it simple, stupid!