LandfallVoyages

We’re making our big push to get ready to sail south. Lots of work to be done, you saw part of the list a few days ago.

Everything needs to be right, we’ll have 300 mile stretches with no place to pull into if things go wrong.

We’ve wanted a watermaker all along but they’re really expensive. My friends on Sea Raven bought one a few weeks ago, $5000.00 dropped on one big box. I’ve been looking and looking the last couple of years but the minimum is pretty much $3000.00, a daunting figure. I explored the idea of making one myself. There are several websites out there that feature adequate information, some conflicting but nonetheless adequate to assemble the parts and make it work.

A reverse osmosis watermaker is much like the RO system you may have under your sink but it is also required to remove all of the salt from sea water. This requires a much finer membrane to keep the salt out and much finer needs a LOT more pressure and a lot of pressure means a lot of electricity.

These systems, all of the home made and most of the manufactured feature a pressure washer pump, exactly what powers those coin-op car washes. A one or two horsepower electric motor (or engine driven) coupled to the 1200 psi pump, forcing the highly filtered salt water through one or two membranes and into your water tanks.

A series of filters before the pump keep the membranes safe. Typically there is a sea strainer (exactly what it sounds like), then a finer screen, then a 30 micron paper filter, and finally a 10 micron filter before the pump.

A few weeks ago I was perusing a sailing forum, Cruiserforum.com and I spotted a used watermaker for sale, cheap. A used motor and pump on ebay is about $350.00 and this lady was selling a whole system for $375.00 including shipping from Oregon. Needless to say I jumped right on that!

I shot her an email straight away and she sent me some pictures right quick-like. I called her on the phone with a list of questions. Tamiko had wanted to know exactly why they were selling a good used watermaker with only 99 hours on is so cheap. I told her before the call that I was sure it was because they had just bought a boat, the watermaker had sat unused for a long time and would certainly need to have the membranes replaced (at $180.00 each) and that they would still feel unsure about it and that they would probably just rather plunk down the cash and feel comfortable. When I called, Gina, the nice lady who was selling it, recited the answers that i had guessed at almost word-for-word. We all got a good laugh out of that.

Right after the call I shot her off a paypal, very confident that everything would go as planned and it did. A few days later our two huge heavy boxes landed safely in San Diego and a few days later I got a ride up to the dark side of the border to pick it up. Of course everything was just as I had expected, although heavier, and then we had a watermaker.

I’m sitting at a cafe in Ensenada and the sun has crept behind the building and now I’m freezing my ass off, so I will detail the watermaker, the parts necessary to refurbish it, and pictures of the installation in my next post.

Gotta go before I turn into a pumpkin!