All I want for Christmas — a water maker

Ok, so now we know we are cruisers when G’s Christmas wish was a water maker.  Actually we have a water maker but it didn’t work very well not connected up.  Yes our busy summer and deadline departure from Annapolis left a few things dangling – like the water maker and a solar panel that showed up the day after we left despite having cancelled the order.  Tommy at Sailaway Catamarans is kindly holding the solar panel until our return next summer.

Feeling no pressure from this Christmas wish, I carefully unpacked everything, read the instructions 3 times (very uncharacteristic of me) and set about to produce some salt free water.  Only problem was one hose was short 3 inches in the configuration that Lindsay and I had mounted everything in a last second panic before leaving Annapolis.  So it all came apart and was installed in an alternate configuration.  Only problem is that parts are a bit scarce here in Virgin Gorda and some critical connections I thought I had packed away failed to materialize.  To cut to the chase, I became cruiser creative (I will omit the details because it was ugly but worked) and after rewiring the power a second time (still unsolved problem with the pump demanding 50 amps on start-up) we started producing water – before Christmas.

This was indeed a good thing because we were just about out of water and the location where we were moored was jammed with boats – we were afraid to leave to get water for fear of not finding a spot to come back to.  But it all worked and we are feeling quite posh. Gee, the clothes get washed in the washing machine and we don’t have to panic about 10 drops of water not being put to the best use(s).  With this thing we even “have” to make water every 4 days so I guess we “have” to use it up.  A whole different concept from our miserly water ways the past couple of months.

So flush with water, we got inspired and celebrated Christmas on Blue Sky with a pot luck inviting couples from four other boats to join us (John and Anne from Folie á Deux, Richard and Diane from Endorphin II, Jill and Tony from Nychea, and Jim and Sharon from Somewhere).  It was delicious and the company was fantastic.  We discovered that Anne’s mother, Louise, is in the same residential complex as P’s mother, Twin Lakes, and Louise connected with Edna last Friday!  Small world.