Drinking water aboard

colhel

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Just out of curiosity, what do lliveaboards do for drinking water? As a day sailor and occasional weekender I use bottles rather than the water tank. Do you use purification tablets, bottles or drink from the tank?
 
Just out of curiosity, what do liveaboards do for drinking water? As a day sailor and occasional weekender I use bottles rather than the water tank. Do you use purification tablets, bottles or drink from the tank?

At 1.35 euro for 9 litres I use bottles.Wash, shower only from tank with a small drop of bleach .I have beautiful blond hair now used to be gray:)
 
Seagull 4 water filter. Not cheap but best bit of kit on the boat. Before getting it we used to lug bottles. In a warm climate that means carrying an awful lot of bottles from shops that can be a long way from the boat. Now we can use our energy carrying beer.
 
Surely it must depend on where 'abroad'!!!!?!?
Is it so that the British water is so fantasic, or your water tanks are cräp???
As I'm permanently 'abroad' and have absolutely no problems drinking from my tank.. but holidays to Spain, Greece and such like I DON'T drink from the tap..
 
For drinking we use water from one of our two tanks, probably a bit over the top but after initially cleaning the tanks we always drop a water purification tablet in with every fill, it then goes through a filter and we also have a Brita Filta jug for good measure.

Also as a precaution taste the water from the supply prior to filling the tanks
 
Your live a board boat should have a Reverse Osmosis filtration system. If so, then you just need to maintain the membrane filter and regularly clean the storage tank. The RO water is not nutritious and can be unhealthy to drink after long periods (like a life time) as it is acidic in PH and has no naturally occurring calcium or other minerals since all the dissolved solids have been filtered out- along with the salt from the sea water or bacteria, viruses from tap water.

Use bottles if you don't have a RO to be sure. Remember too that most bottled water is filtered using RO and if not it is most likely municipal tap water that may or may not be treated with chlorine.
 
Surely it must depend on where 'abroad'!!!!?!?
Is it so that the British water is so fantasic, or your water tanks are cräp???
As I'm permanently 'abroad' and have absolutely no problems drinking from my tank.. but holidays to Spain, Greece and such like I DON'T drink from the tap..

The title was "aboard", on reflection I should have used "on board". I take partial responsibility for your mistake :D
 
Mostly we use our watermaker into tank then Aquafilter out, but when using marina water we ask and if it's generally thought OK we filter on the way into the tank (another Aquafilter) and filter out. Tastes fine.
 
Well we've been cruising for the last 5 years and have always drunk our tank water. Even up river in Gambia the water was fine. Yes, we always taste it first to make sure and we do milton the tanks if we suspect the water has got tainted; but we never buy bottled water as there has never been a need to!

Just out of interest what do you all do with your empty bottles, landfill, dump at sea (loads do!), recycle? Everywhere we've been the local water is fine for all uses and no plastic waste.
 
Another fr the seagull.. amazing bit of kit.
If worried about the incoming water a small length of hose with filter inline before joining to the main hose.
 
We have a Seagull IV but it cannot do anything to improve brackish water. On several Med islands the water available to yachts is of very poor quality, Majorca was particularly bad and several Aegean islands almost so. A friend began to have heart problems that were attributed to drinking local water with high salinity.

Alternatively, there are usually tap supplies that the locals drink, or you can buy drinking water from a road tanker. We buy in Leros, €5 for a tank full, then top up with 10 litre bottles from the public taps in Lakki.
 
The title was "aboard", on reflection I should have used "on board". I take partial responsibility for your mistake :D

Ah yes, you & the tasty bottle of wine last night should be equally responsible;)
So glad to know that I'm blameless in the misreading of the title:D
 
There can also be a problem with the hose you use to fill with. You need to use a "food grade" hose. The type of hose with a black inner leaves a nasty taste in the water & I'm led to believe is slightly toxic.
 
We always drink from the tanks, all taps filtered through Aquasource filter changed annually. Filter also removes the taste (a bit like TCP) from hot hoses and overchlorination which can occasionally be a problem in marinas.

A friend always filters his water going into the tanks which may be sensible precaution.
 
We always drink from the tanks, all taps filtered through Aquasource filter changed annually. Filter also removes the taste (a bit like TCP) from hot hoses and overchlorination which can occasionally be a problem in marinas.

A friend always filters his water going into the tanks which may be sensible precaution.

My wife does post-doctoral research into a method of water purification, and one of the justifications for her work is that chlorine (widely used in water disinfection) reacts with organic material to form carcinogenic compounds. Not a problem if the chlorination is done in a controlled and monitored manner as in the water company water processing plants, but it has made me a bit leery of water sources where I can smell chlorine.

Sadly, her work is not yet at the product development stage!

We tend to boil water from the tanks; an in-line filter is on our wish-list.
 
Interesting (to me) that so many drink straight from tanks, yet others see this as a big no no. Most people I meet on the daysail/wekend circuit use bottles which take up valuable beer storage space and are a pain cos they keep rolling around the floor.
Is there some sort of water testing thing to check healthy water?
 
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