Questions about fresh water and ...

[Rob Morton]

We have a Hunter 23 and we have been making our boat more cruising friendly after reading many posts here, ideas from Brian and Stephs boat as well as the book Sailing Big on a Small Boat. I had a couple of questions for any input.We are looking at adding pressurized water. Has anybody done this? My thought was to add a bigger water tank, in the center or on the port side. Install an electric pump with an accumulator and then add a small single handle faucet. I was thinking about making two inlet lines so I could hook one up (with a Y valve and shut off) to a solar shower bag and thus have warm water. On the outlet side I was going to put another Y and be able to have the water run to a shower head if needed. This could also serve as a back up bilge pump if that was needed. Also has anybody bought the "pop top" here on this web site? I was looking at that and it seemed like a pretty good idea. The other question was on refridgeration for this size boat. The admiral hates the mess of ice and having to deal with it. We have an electric cooler but it takes quite a bit of juice. It will run 24 hours on a fully charged deep cycle battery. When we go cruising its usually for 3 days or so and then hit a marina for freshening up. Any thoughts are appreciated. Rob MortonS/V Euphoira

 

[Reudi Ross]

A few ideas

Don't know about the 23, but I have a hunter 260 with a 20 gallon h2o tank that I added an electric pump to. The switch for it is in the fawcet handle, so it does not run unless the fawcet is opened. I use a solar shower for bathing and fill it from the fawcet.I use gallon water jugs for drinking water for the most part. They taste better and are refillable if you get the ones with screw on lids. Also in some areas you don't want to drink the fresh water available at marinas (read that Mexico). They stow easily in the various setee lockers, and I keep the one I'm using behind the companionway ladder. As far as refrigeration goes, unless you make a substantial investment in battery capacity, and power generation(either gas generator or large solar), It will kill your batteries pretty quickly. We did a month in the Sea of Cortez and carried 2 coolers, the 48 quart that fits in the usual spot in a 260 and a large igloo 110 quart that fits crossways quite nicely in the cabin. We used the 48 quart with dry ice when we could get it for food stuff. and the large one with block ice for beer and pop. I bought the smallest Rule bilge pump on ebay for about $7 drilled a 7/16" hole in the top of the outl

 

[Reudi Ross]

only 1/2 the reply posted, try again

Don't know about the 23, but I have a hunter 260 with a 20 gallon h2o tank that I added an electric pump to. The switch for it is in the fawcet handle, so it does not run unless the fawcet is opened. I use a solar shower for bathing and fill it from the fawcet.I use gallon water jugs for drinking water for the most part. They taste better and are refillable if you get the ones with screw on lids. Also in some areas you don't want to drink the fresh water available at marinas (read that Mexico). They stow easily in the various setee lockers, and I keep the one I'm using behind the companionway ladder. As far as refrigeration goes, unless you make a substantial investment in battery capacity, and power generation(either gas generator or large solar), It will kill your batteries pretty quickly. We did a month in the Sea of Cortez and carried 2 coolers, the 48 quart that fits in the usual spot in a 260 and a large igloo 110 quart that fits crossways quite nicely in the cabin. We used the 48 quart with dry ice when we could get it for food stuff. and the large one with block ice for beer, pop, etc. I bought the smallest Rule bilge pump on ebay for about $7 drilled a 7/16" hole in the top of the outlet barb. Glued 4' of 3/8" clear tygon tubing into the hole and glued the outlet shut. That way the hose is vertical instead of horizontal. I put a cigarette lighter plug on the wires and use that to pump out the coolers instead of killing my back lifting to drain them. If we pumped them out twice a day they didn't get yucky.Our electrical system consists of 220 amp hours of 12 volt batteries, A honda EU 1000 generator, 30 amp smart charger, and 1500 watt AC inverter. The AC runs a small microwave and coffee maker. We could run a stereo, GPS, and autopilot 3-4 days and be at about 50% battery capacity. The honda would bring the batteries up to 90% in 3.5 hours. It wasn't worth running the honda to get the last 10% because the charger ramps down the charge rate during the final stages of charging.