Departing

We are departing Thursday or Friday depending on the weather. All the food is aboard, fuel is full, engine is good to go, radar is fixed, we are ready. We are heading down to West Palm Beach where we will wait for the right weather to cross the gulf stream. We are going to check in in the Abacos and slowly head south from there.

We finished our final big boat project, the watermaker. We have run it up to do a pressure/leak check, found a couple of leaks but were able to fix them all.

Water comes in here, bottom line goes to the washdown pump, top line goes to the watermaker. The random valve hanging down is the fresh water intake to flush the watermaker:

From the intake the water goes to this small boost pump. This pump primes the system with sea water (or fresh water if flushing the system):

Then the water goes through these two filters, 20 and 5 micron:

After the water is filtered it goes through the high pressure pump. This is the 1.5hp electric motor and the high pressure pump. This pump creates the necessary pressure to push the water through the reverse osmosis membranes, about 700-800 psi:

Water is pumped at high pressure through these pressure vessels that house the RO membranes. The membranes filter out 99.9% of contaminants:

Two products come out of the pressure vessels, brine discharge and fresh water. The brine or waste is discharged directly overboard, the fresh water is directed to the control panel. From the control panel we can monitor output, control the pressure, and manage water flow. The flow of water goes to a sink so we can test it for purity. Once the water passes the test we switch the valve to “tank” and send it to our fresh water tanks on the boat. Panel is not pretty but it’s functional:

This tank manifold directs fresh water to any of the three tanks on our boat. Pretty simple:

The water in our marina is pretty murky so we haven’t actually made water with this system yet. We are waiting until we get back into clearer water but so far, in theory it works. We ran everything using well water from our house (jugged it in), ran it up to pressure and everything seemed to work fine. We will test is for real once we get underway. It’s totally home made so it is not pretty but we are hoping it will give us all the fresh water we need.

Because it’s truly not tested yet, I keep thinking of this line from the original Star Wars movie:

“Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet Make Water is insignificant next to the power of The Force”

                                                                             Darth Vadar

We have finished up our medical and dental and all the other “things” we had to do so we should be leaving Thursday, Friday at the latest. We have had perfect weather almost the entire time here in Florida. Now we want to leave there is a storm coming…