So this is day 10 of what seems to become a 15 day journey across the Atlantic Ocean. We are two third through and there is still the long stretch of 700 nautical miles to go. It is almost as much as from Tenerife to Cape Verde. And guess what, I‘m not the only one who wishes that this could go on like that for a bit longer!
Well, let’s check this again after another three days. The sea rolls the boat quite a bit at times. So we even couldn’t think about the classical mid Atlantic swim. Glad we had our swimming and plunging a few days earlier when the winds were low.
One of the great things on board is that everybody enjoys a sweet water shower and hair wash every second day. The silky dry skin feeling would last for a couple of hours, before the salty air would take over again until the next shower.
There are two equally sized water tanks aboard Yuana. The upper tank is full and closed as a drinking water reserve during a long passage. This is a safety measure, should the water in the lower tank go bad, for example due to a malfunction of the water maker.
The lower tank is refilled with the water maker every second or third day. A water maker processes sea water into super clean demineralized water. We even use a mineralization and hardener station to enrich this water for drinking and easy rinsing of soap.
That water from the tank goes again through a coal filter. It removes any smells from water we would have taken in from marinas. So we have always perfectly clean and nice tasting drinking water available. The six of us consume up to 100 liters of fresh water per day for drinking and cooking, dishes, washing and body hygiene.
The water maker is the largest energy consumer aboard. To get 55 liters of fresh water per hour requires a high pressure water pump working at 56 bar. The electric motor for that pump consumes 38 Amps at 12V. That electric power is generated with the Diesel engine.
Conclusion is that we run quite a complicated process to turn oil into water. The one aboard who understands the whole system appreciates the showers even more;-).
Nautical miles during the crossing:
Day 10: 140 nm
Day 9: 147 nm
Atlantic accomplished. Twice. 