Top Ways To Get Fresh Water On A Sailboat
Getting fresh water on a sailboat is pretty important. You’re surrounded by seawater, which is incredible to look at and swim in, but not so great to drink! It’s so frustrating that it’s right there, and yet pretty useless at keeping us alive.
Luckily there are now numerous ways to get fresh water on a sailboat, and if you live onboard you’ll want to know all the tricks of the trade. Having fresh water to drink is obviously vital, but having fresh water to wash in, wash up in and cook in is also such a treat. It’s amazing how much you take water for granted when you live on dry land!
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Some boats these days even have washing machines and dishwashers – just imagine! Being able to wash your clothes in your home instead of dragging bags and bags of laundry to the laundrette is certainly a huge life upgrade for anyone living on a boat full time.
But how do you get fresh water on a sailboat, and how easy is it? Let’s find out!
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Water tanks for storing fresh water on a sailboat
Storing fresh water in jerry cans
Watermakers For Making Fresh Water On A Sailboat
By far the best solution to fulfilling all your freshwater needs on a sailboat is to install a sailboat watermaker. But these things don’t come cheap! Watermakers are a gift sent from heaven for full-time liveaboards like us wanting a little comfort in their lives.
After spending three years scouring maps for possible town quays and filling up jerry cans from beach showers after dark, we bit the bullet and splashed out on a Rainman watermaker and our lives (and odors) have improved exponentially.
Watermakers take seawater and turn it into freshwater through a desalination process, so as long as you have enough power you can make enough freshwater to last forever! The only hitch is, as I just said, you need the power. You can read all about how much power you’ll need in our full review write-up.
We run the watermaker every few days for a few hours at a time in the summer and have no problems at all with power. Where we do struggle is through the shoulder season when the days are often cloudy. We’re looking into investing in a wind generator so we don’t have to rely on fossil fuels to meet our energy needs!
The other thing to consider before splashing out on a watermaker is maintenance. This is one of the main reasons we opted for the Rainman watermaker because they use generic parts that you should be able to source from most places in the world. Other watermakers have proprietary parts that are hard to get hold of in certain places. Make sure you bear that in mind before you purchase!
One downside to watermakers is that you can’t run them safely in marinas, where there’s more likely to be a higher concentration of spilled fuel and oil. But if you’re tied up to a dock then chances are you have access to freshwater anyway, so this isn’t usually a problem!
Water Tanks For Storing Fresh Water On A Sailboat
Whether you have a watermaker or not you’re going to want at least one water tank onboard to store the water you find or make. There are lots of different types of water tank, some better than others!
Our boat came with a metal one that corroded, so we replaced it with the cheaper plastic, flexible water tanks. We used several different connected ones to act as a sort of baffle and it does pretty well. The big benefit of these kinds of tanks is that they’re cheaper and easier to install.
The downside is that they can leave behind a plastic taste, and are obviously prone to puncturing if you don’t position them carefully.
You don’t need to do much to maintain your water tanks, just a good rinse out with some diluted bleach when you come back to your boat after the winter months should do the trick!
Most boats will have water fill up points on the deck so that you can fill your tank with a hose from the shore. If you don’t want to invest in a watermaker then having several big water tanks should last a good while after filling. We can carry 500 litres and could make the water last over a month between the two of us, though fresh water showers were a rarity and we washed out dishes in salt water with just a quick fresh water rinse.
Collecting Rainwater For Your Sailboat
If you’re sailing in the tropics then collecting rainwater is a great way to stock up on your fresh water supplies. You can configure your awnings, bimini or solar panels to catch rainwater and funnel it into a container or straight into your deck tank fill. The bigger the surface area, the more rainwater you’re likely to catch!
For this to be effective you need to be somewhere it actually rains frequently. During the summer months we probably see rain once, if we’re lucky, while sailing here in Greece. If it does rain then it tends to be because of a huge thunderstorm, and we normally have other worries at that point rather than catching water!
When we do catch rainwater we tend to collect it in separate containers and use it for washing decks rather than washing ourselves, as we’re never sure how polluted it is.
Fill Jerry Cans With Fresh Water For Your Sailboat
One of the easiest ways to store fresh water on your sailboat is using jerry cans. This will only really work if you’re using your boat for shorter trips, as the inconvenience of having to fill up every day or every few days would quickly become tiresome if you’re living aboard.
The great thing about using jerry cans to fill up your fresh water supply is that you don’t need to rely on tying to shore. You can fill up jerry cans from the dinghy and stay out at anchor for as long as you like! We speak from experience after a summer of doing exactly this. It was time consuming and not much fun, but it was possible!
We always carry several jerry cans like this that we can use to store extra drinking water just in case one of our tanks fail. This is also an important thing to do for offshore sailing, as if your tanks burst or spring a leak, you’ll have no back up supply.
These collapsible water containers are great if you’re short on storage and don’t plan on using them constantly. They’re not as hard-wearing but they fold down pretty much flat. If you’ll be using them for longer periods then go for a proper water jerry can (or three!)
If you’re looking to move onto a sailboat then hopefully all your water related questions have now been answered! If not, ask away in the comments section below and we’ll be happy to help.
If you’re starting to plan a life at sea then check out our comprehensive guide, which details everything you need to know and do before, during and after moving onto a sailboat. We really hope it helps you get this journey started – you won’t regret it!
