Making Water

We are now 22 miles from Providencia, Columbia. That's an island at 13°22'N and 081°22''W. It's closer to Nicaragua than mainland
Columbia, but Columbia owns it. I thought about stopping at Serranilla Bank instead, but I read that the Colombian military
approaches boats sheltering there, but usually allows them to stay the night. Providencia seems more inviting.

The watermaker is essentially a pump and a membrane that squeezes the salt out of the water using reverse osmosis, leaving drinkable
and showerable fresh water. We use that a lot, because I like to shower and drink water and drink tea.

Our watermaker has been on the decline ever since Mexico. The parts per million (ppm) of salt in the fresh water output has been
going steadily up, and eventually passed the 750 ppm limit.

Last night, I ran it for about two hours, restarting four times, before I could get any good water out of it.

Mike called Spectra, the manufacturer, to see what's wrong. They gave me some things to do. I replaced the filters. I cleaned the
strainer. I looked for leaks in the sea water input. I disconnected the saltwater discharge hose and ran it into a bucket, checking
the gallons per minute. It was 2.25 and should have been 3.6.

Then I called them on the satphone. We have a sick feedwater pump. We have a spare pump on the boat, but I hate to tear into it out
of range of a garden hose if I can help it. Luckily, Dean at Spectra told he how to change the pump speed and make it work. He said
to speed it up.

I took apart the control panel and found the proper potentiometer (after another phone call). I turned it all the way to the right.
I wanted that baby running FAST. No change. Then, almost as an afterthought, I turned the pot all the way to the left.

Big change. I got lots of good water, faster than before. The feed pressure was a lot higher. I walked away for a minute and then
looked back. The lights on the control panel were out and the watermaker was off. I hiked down into the engine room where the
watermaker is located, and saw it had thrown a breaker.

Maybe all the way to the left was a little too far. I backed off a quarter turn and now the watermaker is happy, I'm happy, and
Melinda is asleep.

Spectra is a pretty good company. Their people have been knowledgable and helpful every time I've talked to them. Their watermakers
use less electricity than any of others I've seen (for comparable output), and they run off 12v or 24v DC.

When we got this boat, it had a watermaker that only ran if the generator was running. It took too much electricity for our inverter
to handle. And we have a big inverter. This meant if the generator went out, we could get no water. And that happened to us crossing
the Atlantic. Now we have the Spectra that requires a fraction of the power and does not need the generator.

We also have a spare watermaker, lower capacity, mounted next to the main one. We also have a small manual-pump watermaker. And we
have a lot of bottles of water on the boat. Hopefully we won't have to worry about that "ne'er any drop to drink" stuff.