Safe and readily available portable water is important for all of us, without it we all know what happens. Whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production or sanitation purposes fresh clean water is essential. Supplying our fresh drinkable water, is one of the most important self reliant systems we have onboard Our Dreamtime.
The areas we sail to, in remote, 3rd world countries and even areas of the Mediterranean don’t have universal and equitable access to safe drinking water.
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| Polluted waterways like this is not where we want our water to come from. |
In Australia it is accessible everywhere it’s something we take for granted. Through marinas we visit and town water supplies, whenever we pulled into dock we could just fill up the tanks. However since leaving the comforts of civilised treated water plants and pumped water to our facets, where we have sufficient, continuous, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water.
Turning on a tap and using water has taken on a whole new meaning to us.
Nowhere since Cooktown (May 2023) have we been able to access safe clean portable water from the land. That means every drop we have used onboard, for drinking, cooking, cleaning bathing and sanitisation on Our Dreamtime we have needed to produce ourselves through our desalination unit.
These units are not cheap, but for the type of sailing we do we feel it is essential. Yes there will be some ol’ salts out there that say “we didn’t have them years ago and survived” well the answer to that is yes, but many were ill from the water they did ingest.
Below we take you through some of the questions we are asked about water onboard.
But if you want water flowing from your tap constantly, how is this achieved on a boat? This question is even more important when you are sailing in remote regions of the world where water quality isn’t to standard. Most vessels in the private yacht industry will use a reverse osmosis water-maker to produce water on-board.
So what is a reverse osmosis water-maker? Reverse osmosis uses high-pressure pump to push sea water through a membrane. This removes the salt and solids to produce fresh water. The next step is to pump fresh water into dedicated desalination or fresh water tanks. Finally in reverse osmosis, the last step is to disperse concentrated (salt/solids) overboard.
Do we notice the difference between town water and reverse osmosis water? The answer is yes – the cleaner the water the nicer it tastes. Your tap water has been collected through a natural process. You collect water on a boat through desalination which is not a natural process. In many countries chemicals are also added to the water, which will affect the taste. Reverse osmosis has no to very little taste, the taste that you do have is probably due to your tank residue.
Are there health issues drinking reverse osmosis water? There is virtually no tried-and-tested evidence to suggest that reverse osmosis water is harmful to your health. If you eat a balanced diet and do not suffer from conditions like severe acid reflux or gastrointestinal ulcers, drinking reverse osmosis water will have no impact on your overall health and wellbeing. However the system does remove healthy minerals including calcium, magnesium, potassium and bicarbonates from the water. To compensate this you can easily add Electrolyte powders. They are specifically formulated to infuse water with minerals and electrolytes that have been removed by the reverse osmosis system. We simply mix the powder into our first litre of drinking water of the day.
Note: Most electrolyte powders are used as powdered sports drinks and gym beverages, and may contain artificial flavourings and colorants that may be harmful to your body in excess amounts. Choose flavourless and sugar-free powder mixes for the best health.
So what reverse osmosis system do we have onboard? We operate a Rainman Portable Watermaker to produce pure, fresh, drinking water from the sea onboard Our Dreamtime. We have been using this system for 3 years. Ours is a 240 volt model that requires a generator to run it, but as we have a diesel generator onboard it has been an easy addition to our essential equipment onboard.
So what do we think about the unit? What we do believe is we couldn’t sail the areas of the world that we do without a water-maker. If you would like to see our full review on the Rainman Water-Maker after 3 Years use follow the link below.
The video shows the very simple steps to set up and operate a Rainman Portable Watermaker to produce pure, fresh, drinking water from the sea onboard a boat via reverse osmosis. It’s also our honest, totally unsponsored, review of the system after using it on Our Dreamtime for the past three years, long enough to really know the product. We discuss an initial problem we had with the unit and the company’s response and the availability of spares and service. We also test its rate of production against the advertised figures and finally give you our verdict on whether we think this is a thumbs up or down.
We hope you find it interesting and also check out our regular Dreamtime Sail Episodes dedicated to our full time, cruising life in Australia and South East Asia.
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