Need a little bit more info. How big is your boat and its potable water supply? How many people aboard? Where do you plan on
anchoring out? All the post above are correct about your water filter idea,"that wont work". I think you should ask yourself how often you want to
head in for water and be realistic about how much you use. Water is what sets you free. You can wait for
wind to get you where you want to go.
Solar will keep your
batteries up pretty well if you are careful making water and
food your limiting commodities. We learned this lesson the hard way years ago when a faulty diverter valve made us believe both of our water
tanks were full when in fact we had only half the water we thought. That cost us 2 full days of hard earned
vacation and solidified for us the need for a water maker. I know its expensive but without one you seriously limit yourself. there are plenty of purist on this forum who will take only sponge baths and meter out water as if it was liquid gold and that will
work if you like that kind of limit. We use water much less sparingly on Mulligan. My wife and I agree the other is way more attractive after a shower I don't like salt on my decks and
hardware so I frequently use the fresh water
deck rinse. There are several
DIY water-maker plans available but its still not
cheap if you ultimately decide to go that
route. If you do there are two basic schools of thought.
1. High
power draw high output.
2.
Low power draw low output.
We have both systems installed on two separate boats. Our mono Tropical Depression has a CruiseROwater system. It runs off of a
Honda 2000i gas
generator producing 30+ gph and will top off her tanks in just a little over 2:45 it is loud so we plan on being in the water or shoreside when we use it The guys at
cruise are great and responsive to questions.
On Mulligan we went with a Spectra 150. It produces about 7 gph and runs on 12 volt. On good days our wind and
solar charging more than keeps up with its demands. It is much quieter than the CruiseRo
I don't favor either system over the other now having had both for a couple of years.
If You have an installed genset on your boat and use it regularly for toping off the house bank then your choice becomes even easier because you wont need to carry a gas genset in addition to the water maker system components. I will note that the
Honda 2000i has no additional capacity when its running the CruiseRO water maker, where as a large
diesel genset has excess capacity to charge batteries etc.
Last but not least most of the places we go in the Bahamas water is not
cheap, we have seen water in excess of .30 cents per gallon.
Good luck with whatever you chose.