The only way you know if your water maker is working to spec is to test the product water for total dissolved solids (TDS) and measure the output in liters/minute. I also smell and taste the product water before directing the output to the fresh water tank; not sure how many fancy water makers have that option. Don’t believe anyone who tells you their water maker works just as well as when it was new 10 or 20 years ago unless they test for TDS and flow rate. Just because they think it tastes OK doesn’t mean it’s working properly. Ever boil a frog slowly? Also – the performance of a water maker changes dramatically with sea water temperature. We’re now in 25-degree Celcius water now and we’re getting about 1.95 liters/minute at 255 ppm TDS. That’s excellent water, and it smells and tastes just so. When we were in warmer climes such as 31-Celcius, we were getting TDS in the 350 ish range and production at 2.0 liters/minute. Also, if the water pressure entering the high-pressure vessels is lower than spec (our DOW membranes liked 800 psi) the TDS will go up dramatically. That’s the problem with energy recovery water makers. Yes the energy recovery pump itself is a marvel of engineering, but if built well the common failure mode seems to be degradation of the feed pump output pressure over time. They are supposed to output something like 100 psi at a particular flow rate, and if they fall off that curve very much the product water gets unacceptable.
In the spirit of beating a dead horse, the performance of your cruising boat in light airs is critical. Ignore idiots who rave about how fast the boat will go in 25 knots. That much wind will make for some really lumpy seas and you’re not going to want to do that unless you’re racing around the cans. How many folks who live in RVs take them out to the drag strip on Friday night? This boat is our home, for goodness sake. If you’re a retired couple out cruising, you want a boat that’s safe and easy to handle, with sails that’ll make you go in light airs even when the wind is deep. You ain’t gonna get any younger, and if you want to do this for a long time you need to make sailing in difficult conditions safe and easy. Seawind really has that figured out.
As my friend Rich Boren likes to say, no cruiser ever complained about having too much solar, too much house battery capacity, too much fresh water, or too much fuel on board. You’re probably not clever enough to optimize every system on board for all conceivable conditions, so err a bit on the side of excess and you’ll probably be happy after a few years of cruising.
Notice how cockpit scuppers work in heavy seas. Because of the way waves can slap our hull surfaces and reflect or refract, sometimes our cockpit scuppers turn into freakin’ geysers. They have fairings on the bottom side to limit this problem, but it still happens. I tried putting a hard cover over the scupper nearest the saloon door we normally keep open unless it’s blowing rain because the geyser was causing salt water to land in the saloon. Not good. My “solution” apparently pressurized the fairing and blew it completely off the hull. Now I get to build and install a new one, so it seems I outsmarted myself. Again.
Unless your cruising agenda is just coastal stuff with a lot of marina living, you better learn how to fix everything on your boat and carry the right tools and spares. Only rich folks can afford to pay technicians to fix stuff all the time, and the quality of the technicians work is often in question anyway. There’s a lot of satisfaction in being able to DIY, and it allows you to enjoy remote places without fear or megabucks fees. Never forget the more complex a system is, the more things that will go wrong and will be difficult to troubleshoot.
Covid may have permanently changes the work life for many people – working from home seems to be a thing now. Eventually Starlink will enable more cruisers to work from remote anchorages.
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