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| Culebra |
Water is a necessity whether you live on land or sea...drinking water is usually easy to get by when living on land and most people don't really think about it much when they open their faucets. Drinking water on a boat is an entirely different story, because what comes out of the tap will eventually cease to exist! Now what? Well...on the one hand many boats have water makers, which are desalination units that convert salt water to drinking water...they require either the boat's engine or a generator to power them. There are on the other hand many boats that do not have a water maker...which requires the boat's crew to go and fetch potable water from an off boat source to fill the water tanks. Marinas usually sell water, so the easiest way to fill the water tanks is to park at their fuel dock, put the hose in the tank and fill it up...just like fuel water is measured by a meter and you pay by the gallon.
Of course sometimes there are no marinas around, so the water needs to be brought to the boat...this is usually done by filling 5 gallon water containers and schlepp them back to the boat via the dinghy...a little bit time consuming, but good for building muscles and that complete feeling of accomplishment when the job is done :) I speak from experience, because we topped up our water tanks today via the "schlepp method" and we are now sitting in our cockpit with smirky smiles of accomplishment on our faces...really and truly! My captain did most of the hard work...filling the portable tanks, dinghying back and forth many times and lifting the tanks in and out of the dinghy! My job was to receive the portable tanks and transfer the water into ORION's tanks. We hauled 50 gallons today and now have full tanks again on ORION...approx. 140 gallons of water...and in addition we filled our three portable 5 gallon tanks and stored them on deck! That's plenty water for our next adventures of sailing to some of the nice beaches surrounding Culebra...woohoo :) We are just waiting for our new portable freezer and as soon as we have it onboard we'll take off...as usual...stay tuned!
