Went outside from Ft Pierce to West Palm, took advantage of north winds. WPB is beautiful, water is blue, clear and warm. Had fantastic dinner with friends last night. Going diving this AM. No decent wifi from anchorage so we’re updating with the phone. Will upload pictures when we get internet.
Heading South
We are hoping to depart Fort Pierce first thing in the morning and head south to West Palm Beach. We will update when we arrive.
Anchored!
Wow, what a great day! We left the marina in Melbourne this morning and dropped anchor in Fort Pierce this evening. Overall a nice day but a bit cool, in the upper 60’s, wind howling.
We fired up the watermaker to see if it really works…and it does!! Our homemade watermaker actually makes pure water!! Here it is putting out 40 gallons per hour (the flow meter on the right):
Drinking water should have less than 500 PPM or parts per million of TDS or total dissolved solids, our water has 99 ppm and it’s delicious:
As we were getting south the water turned from brown to green. Couldn’t capture it as well as we wanted but the water is beautiful and warm, 72 degrees:
We dropped anchor in Fort Pierce and found our friends here. Friends on the radio, friends on the phone:
Beautiful sunset:
It’s soooo nice to be back on the boat and headed south!!
The wind is blowing 20-30 through tomorrow and we are in a nice anchorage so we are staying put until Sunday. All is well and we are having fun!!!
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…
Provisions
We are just about finished provisioning, this is only about half of it. We have another pile already on the boat and a few last minute things still to buy.
Can’t wait to get underway!
Categories: Boat, General
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