Types of Water Makers

Water Makers are a great way to refill your tanks without needing to go to a pier. If you are anchored in a gorgeous secluded spot, you won’t have to raise anchor and head to the nearest fuel dock to get more water. Instead, you can just stay in paradise and fill your tanks!

Water makers work by hyper compressing sea water on one side of a filter. This high pressure also leads to a “high concentration” on one side of the filter. Water will always want to migrate from one area of low concentration to another area of higher concentration. This process is called osmosis. Water makers work by creating such a high pressure gradient that they actually reverse this normal osmotic process and cause the water to literally be squeezed out of the super salty solution and back across the filter to an area that is completely salt free. This is why water makers are also called Reverse Osmosis Machines.

As you can imagine, this process requires a lot of power to produce the pressure gradient, and this power is typically supplied in the form of electricity.

Electricity powers the pump that generates the intense pressure and literally squeezes the fresh water out of the super salty solution. The result is fresh water that goes into a water tank and brine (super salty water) that is dumped back into the sea.

Electric water makers can generate a few gallons per hour, but the cost of electricity increases just as fast as the gallons produced per hour. If you want more water, you are going to pay for it with more amps!

The alternative to electronic water makers are manual water makers, which rely on the power of leverage and good old arm strength! These units are typically considered “survival gear” or for emergency use. You would probably use one of these devices to fill a glass of drinking water instead of using it to top off your giant water tank.

While these units do not require the use of electricity, they will more than makeup for the power demands from your arms! These units can produce just as much water as an electric unit, independent of your electrical bank, but it could also double as your own personal exercise regimen.

Water makers are great, but they are best thought of as a way to top off your existing water tanks that are capable of sustaining you on your voyage and not as a source of endless water which negates the need for water tankage in your yacht.

Water Maker, How Should You Think of Them?

Water makers are touted as a great safety feature because they can give you unlimited fresh water! Then thing is, a watermaker represents “potential” gallons, and not realized gallons.

There are many factors that need to be in place for a water maker to produce fresh water. It needs a clean water supply, it needs a power source, and it needs to be in working order. If any of these factors are missing, the unit will fail to produce fresh water for you!

Water makers are great, as long as you use them properly. This doesn’t correspond with proper operation, but proper mentality.

Water makers are capable of producing fresh water, but that doesn’t mean that you “have” the fresh water yet, just that you “could have” the fresh water.

It is important to have all the water you will need for your passage on the boat and in tanks before you leave a safe harbor. A water maker can be used to keep the tanks full, but shouldn’t be used in the water calculations of water capacity on the boat.

When sailing a long distance, it is important to calculate the “Miles to Empty” that you have. Basically, divide the number of miles you have left to go by the number of gallons you have.
For example, if you are sailing 1000 miles and carry 100 gallons, then you have to sail 10 miles for ever gallon of water you consume to make it there on empty. If you are sailing slowly, then be very sparring with your water usage. If you are sailing much faster than anticipated and soon going to arrive, maybe take that shower you have been thinking about.

By doing this simple calculation, you can make sure that you will have enough water to safely make a passage. Adding a water maker simply gives you the ability to keep your tanks full on the way, which means that your 1000 miles on 100 gallons will become 900 miles on 100 gallons, and later on, 500 miles on 100 gallons. As you get closer and closer to the destination with a full tank, you can be more liberal in your water usage. This is the luxury that a water maker brings, not the thought that you carry unlimited gallons of fresh water.

Knot Fast!

Knots, they offer endless possibilities for the systems you can create in a rope, but tying them can be time consuming.

This knot, the Alpine Butterfly Knot can be tied in 5 seconds and is a great way to put a bight in a line!

Watts, Volts, and Amps

Batteries, Electric Motors, Solar Panels, Generators, and Wind Generators all have one thing in common, their outputs are typically measured in Watts?

Why watts and not amps or volts? Well, the answer is actually rather simple: watts don’t change depending on your setup.

You see, Watts, Volts, and Amps are linked in a mathematical formula. W = V x A

From this formula, you can determine the third value when you are only given 2 of the values by way of simple algebra (and you thought you would never need to use it again)

To not bore you with math, I will surmise to say that as volts and amps fluctuate inversely to each other (as volts climb by a factor, amps decrease by the same factor) watts remain unchanged!

For example (I couldn’t resist):

100W = 12 volts x 8.333 amps
100W = 24 volts x 4.166 amps
100W = 48 volts x 2.08 amps

So, when you purchase an electrical device, they can simply tell you how many Watts it produces or consumes, and the way you wire it will determine the voltage and amperage that it will operate.

To take this further, with electric propulsion, you will see the motors listed in the form of kW instead of Horsepower. The reason is the same, as the motors can come in a whole range of voltages, as low as 24 volts and well up over 96 volts! By listing the motors output in kW, they are uniform and comparable.

For example, a 48v motor that is rated at 20kW will draw 416.6 amps at full throttle. A 96v motor that is rated at 20kW will only draw 208.3 amps. In the end, it is the same amount of power being moved, just at different voltages and amperages.

So remember, next time you look at an electrical gizmo for your boat, consider rating it in watts to compare one device to another instead of looking at the amps it produces or consumes; you might get tricked up by the voltages. Then you can compare the cost of these items with the watts they produce or consume and spend your money in the most effective way to get as many Watts as you can out of each dollar.

Finding Mystery Rot and What to Do

Wood in a marine environment will eventually rot. Choosing rot resistant species will prolong the process, but eventually, it will succumb to the effects of decay. 

Rotten wood is soft, moist, and squishy. When you prod it with a metal probe, the probe will sink into it without resistance. When you tap on it with a hammer, it will not make a bang sound like sound wood would, instead it will make a dull thud. Rotten wood in cosmetic structures like cabinets and interior joinery is unsightly, but rot in structural members is devastating to the structural integrity of your yacht.  

When you find rotten wood, what should you do? Should you cover it up and ignore it? Should you sell the boat?  Should you fix it yourself?

Well all of these question’s answers depend on how you comfortable you are at working on your own boat. If you are willing to take on the restoration of this rotted section, then have at it! If you are tired of boats and all the time they consume, then now would be a good time to sell (but you might get a lot more for the boat if the rot is fixed first).  

Rot is not that big of a problem when it comes to repairing. All the wood has been removed for you! The big picture here is you are going to remove the bad and replace it with new. The decay process of wood is very much like the decay process in teeth, and being a dentist, treating rot is a part of my job. 

When you look at wood, just like with teeth, you will have two types of wood: damaged and ok. Ok wood looks new. It is dry, feels normal, and sounds solid when tapped on. Damaged wood will be wet, look dark, and can be further subjugated into two more categories: Infected and Affected.

Infected wood is rotten and disgusting. It will resemble mulch in the way it just falls apart. It will be wet and make a thud sound when you tap on it, as it is no longer solid. Rotten wood can be removed by scraping with a metal instrument, as the weak remains will just fall apart and come out in pieces. 

Affected wood is simply close to the infected wood, but it doesn’t need to be removed. Sometimes, keeping a bit of wood structure will make your life so much easier. Think about it, if you have some rot in a bulkhead, you don’t need to replace the entire bulkhead, just the rotten portion and scarf in a replacement piece. Affected wood is the transition between the infected and the normal wood. It will be stained, wet, possibly slimy, but it will sound solid when percussed and will not hole when struck with a screwdriver tip. This wood just needs to dry, be wiped down with bleach, and given some time to restore itself before the new wood can be scarfed to it. 

To assess the damage, it is best to sand away any paint that way the full extent of the area can be assessed. They say the first three rules of surgery are:
1. Access
2. Access
3. Access

You need to see what you are working on to figure out how you want to fix the problem. The rotten section is the void of a hole. From there, the affected wood is located somewhere in the transition between the good wood and the infected wood. The problem is, this bulkhead is made up of two layers of 3/4” plywood, so access to the underlaying layer is only attainable by removing the top layer first. 

You can see the large section of wood that has been cut to reveal the underlaying bulkhead plywood. When you have access, you want to treat the wood the wood as you would a cancer in a biopsy: cut everything you suspect and leave only clean margins. With the wood, if your cut section has signs of rot still left behind, cut it back a bit further.  

When you don’t have such liberal access, you will have to be a bit more judicious in your selection of what comes out and what gets to stay. The wood in front of the mast was too close to the mast to get the saw in there, so I was forced to use a drill (dentist joke) to remove the rot. A 1/2” drill bit will do wonders at ripping all the rotten wood out of the plywood, and won’t be able to easily drill into the good wood you want to leave behind.  

When you are removing the rotted wood, it pays to keep in mind that you will need to rebuild next. Severely rotted wood is actually easier to replace because the tabbing on the hull will be left intact. All you need to do is measure the size of the wood that once occupied that space and have it milled. Then you can glue it back in place with gobs of thickened epoxy that has been smooshed into the tabbing. When the wood is partially decayed, it can pose a challenge as you can’t get it to come out as easily. 

If you have a single sheet of rotted wood, consider scarfing in a replacement piece that is held in place with thickened epoxy, followed by a few layers of fiberglass to help tab it all into place. If you have laminated layers of plywood, like in this case, you can simply cut the access hole a bit larger than the deep layer. Now, the deep layer will be glued to the remnants as well as to the access hole’s board, and the access hole’s board will be glued to the deep layers remnants. This stepped approach gives you plenty of surface area to glue everything together while still giving you the ability to put everything back together in a structurally sound method. 

When rebuilding, it is always important to look at the cause of the rot and figure out how to prevent it from happening again. Frame heads are notorious for holding water if they are not beveled towards the midline of the hull. This bulkhead abutted the shower and had no protection from the water that seeped into the wood for decades. 

Figuring out the cause will then let you plan the solution so that the future you or the next generation won’t have to carry out this same repair.