Hi all, looking for some
advice. We are a 49'
monohull with 3
kids on board, ages 8, 10, 12 going from BC,
Canada to pacific
Mexico, across to
Hawaii, and back home, on a one-year sabbatical. Not exactly sure what will happen after the year is done... options are keep the
boat at home, keep going, upgrade to a larger
boat, etc.
Researching
water makers lead me to energy recovery 12v units to run off
solar ie.
Spectra. Turns out the Canadian
Spectra dealer was right in my home town. Since they all use about the same 4 watts / litre, and people say watermakers "like to be run a lot" I calculated that the Ventura 150 at 6.3 gallons/hr should be fine. Our
tanks hold 120 gallons, so it should take 20 hours to go from full to empty. We have never used anywhere close to 60 gallons in a day, so I was thinking <10 hours run time per day. Probably more like 5-8 hours.
So we bought the 150C with the touch
screen fully automatic control for convenience, and I spent close to a week carefully installing it in our boat. I was told the filters should last a month+ so they are neatly installed under our
bed.
What I didn't fully consider is 5-8 hours of run time outside of a harbour is kind of limiting. What if we are staying in the same anchorage for days at a time? We left
Canada on August 2 and a few days later, ran the
watermaker in an "open anchorage" for about 12 hours. The filter quality went from 100% to 10%. The next time I ran the
watermaker, it quickly dropped to 0% and shut off. I put in new filters and the next time we ran it for about 8 hours about 10 miles
offshore. They clogged up in those 8 hours.
Talking to a few Spectra experts on the
phone, yes filters can clog in a day in an anchorage but even 10 miles
offshore there is still enough plankton up north that it's not much different than a harbour. There is a plankton filter kit we could add, but as we are heading south they recommended not bothering with it as the plankton should subside.
Right now we are in southern
Oregon, and will be in
California soon where there are a bunch of Spectra dealers. Obviously I need to pick up a case of filters at minimum.
Talking to the Spectra guy in SF, there are a couple other options we could consider to increase output and shorten run time. He could
rebuild our Clark
pump for 10% output and turn our system into a 200C, so two extra gallons per hour. The other option is to buy a whole new system, the 340C, at double the output, and leave our 150C with him on consignment. This is quite an expensive and time consuming option, but one I am strongly considering. I also like how the 340C has a longer lasting feed
pump, although I could carry a replacement pump
head for ours and that would be far cheaper than a whole new system.
Say we need to run ours on average for 5-8 hours per day, so upgrading to the 340C would cut that in half to 2.5-4 hours per day. So we will still need to run "near shore" and in "clean anchorages" in
Mexico. We aren't going to want to up
anchor and
motor way out on a calm day just to make
water for hours.
So that leads me back to -- if we need to run for 4 hours in an anchorage, what difference is it running for 8 hours? It is quiet enough not to be too annoying. I believe it would be overall the same volume of water passing through the filters. So maybe I should save my
money and just get used to the idea of changing filters more regularly. I will move the filters from under our
bed to the other side of the bulkhead in the sail locker where they will be much more convenient to replace.
We have a
Honda 2000
generator on board, and I did consider a much cheaper AC unit from CruiseRO at 30 gallons per hour, but that would mean running the
generator for 2 hours per day, every day, which I am thinking would get very old very fast.
So if you have read this far, what do you think? Upgrade or keep? I would love to hear thoughts from anyone, particularly if you are cruising with
kids or happen to be around the
Sea of Cortez where we are headed!
Thanks!!!
Nathaniel