When deciding to go on this long sail, I told Magnus that as long as I could have a washing machine, I was good to go. But the washing machine needs water – we need water – so Magnus had to install a watermaker also.
Until recently, our watermaker has been wonderful and a source of happiness. The joy of not having to find fresh water, haul up the anchor and go somewhere to buy water, worrying about water quality – we were happy and comfortable with our watermaker and made water often without a second thought.
Then, when we went on a side trip to Klein Curacao (a wonderful island, see our Facebook and Instagram for pictures), suddenly our watermaker started spitting out filtered salt water. The salt was off the charts, we ran the watermaker for several hours to see if it was just a blip, but no – no fresh water. Some salt water had gone into our tank before we had shut down the prior day, but fortunately the water was still drinkable.
My first instinct was to return to Spanish Waters where we have access to fresh water, but Magnus urged calm and we stayed on at Klein Curacao and were careful with our water. Spare o-rings and other bits were already onboard as part of our preparation for longer sailing, so Magnus and our buddy boat friend John dismantled the watermaker twice and changed all the rings, checked all the parts, and re-installed. No help, still salt water. Another problem with Klein Curacao is that it is uninhabited, which means there is no cellular service. Fortunately, our buddy boat had starlink and it reached our boat, and they let us have access to internet.
We contacted the manufacturer and also the vendor, ordered a replacement membrane (really expensive) and paid for it to be FedEx’ed to Curacao (also really expensive). After asking us to perform tests and film things, the manufacturer agreed that it was probably the membrane. So we filled our tanks with local tap water and conserved water, waiting for the replacement membrane.
Why didn’t we have a replacement membrane onboard? They aren’t supposed to go bad, especially after just 10 months. Our plan has been to get one before crossing the Pacific, but since they have a shelf life and are REALLY EXPENSIVE we hadn’t done it yet.
(have you noticed that I am irritated about how EXPENSIVE the replacement membrane is?)
Anyway – we finally got a replacement membrane, only to have it perform very poorly. The manufacturer points to WHO specifications which say that it’s still drinkable water, but it is SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE than the prior new membrane, and of all the fellow cruisers that we have asked, they all say that none have had a new membrane perform so poorly as ours.
So we got a crummy REALLY EXPENSIVE membrane. We can do laundry, shower, wash dishes – it’s even not so salty that you can taste it – but I know in my head that it is 3 times worse than the prior membrane was, and there is no room for degradation of the membrane. Plus, to try to get the membrane down to “normal” water quality levels, we had to run the watermaker for hours and hours, running down our battery bank in the process. Today we had to run our engine for the first time on our trip to generate power, because all the extra time running the watermaker to flush and flush and flush took out all the stored power onboard.
The saga is not finished, we will continue to talk to the manufacturer and vendor. Both because we don’t think that our membrane should have broken after 10 months of normal use, and also because we think we should get a good quality membrane when we spend SO MUCH MONEY on it.
That’s my frustrated watermaker thought from Spanish Waters, Curacao on 8 September 2024. We will soon be leaving Curacao for Aruba, so new things coming!
FOLLOW-UP – 2024-10-05: The watermaker manufacturer (Spectra) was not willing to work with us at all. They simply said that membranes weren’t covered under warranty. We offered to send it to them at our cost so they could inspect it, and they were not interested. So that’s a big FAIL on the part of Spectra watermakers, especially as the system is new and only had 10 months of use. However, the vendor of the replacement membrane was willing to take it back and refund us for the membrane. Therefore we can recommend Marine Warehouse in Florida, very customer service-minded and respond promptly to queries. The delivery of our replacement membrane to Curacao, while expensive, was also record-breakingly fast. We are still out a couple of hundred dollars (!!) for the shipping both ways, but at least will get the cost of the replacement membrane back. The bad membrane was built by Filmtec / Dupont; and we heard from cruisers after our membrane failure that Dupont had issues and were recalling some membranes. Although we couldn’t find anything online about a recall, we contacted Dupont and they were more interested than Spectra at least.