I have achieved 2 interesting things in the last 2 days that have both worked out well for WildChild. I have replaced the water maker R.O. membrane and reconditioned the water maker system… AND…. we got the hull cleaned this morning. I finally took pictures of it for you guys.
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Water Maker
Lets start with the water maker fight.
Although I did build the water maker on WildChild myself I must admit I am not a Chemical engineer and I don’t exactly understand the details of exactly how it works. I built our water maker system from like a kit I bought from a Canadian company called AquaMaxx based in Beamsville Ontario Canada (Near my home).
I am not sure if you may have ever heard any of my previous rants about this company from earlier videos but….
THEY SUCK…! It’s not the company or the product that sucks it is clearly the management… John has to go… good salesman… like in the way a greasy used car salesman will sell people cars they don’t need… say any lie to get his sale… and whose word cannot be trusted for shit…. but they sell.
If you ever have to deal with this company just be forewarned… their techs are awesome…. their boss is a weasel… and you will have to deal with his empire inside his kingdom.
I will not drone on forever about the problems building the system or getting it commissioned… or about how unhelpful and truly TERRIBLE their manual is… but suffice it to say… expect little help from them.
So for 2 weeks I was trying to contact the company to order a new RO membrane ready to plug and play into my system… (this means already installed in the casing (housing) with the end fittings installed. Only some of my E-mails seemed to get thru… or their computers spammed half of them for some reason. John eventually passes me off to a lovely girl who works there and does orders… it still takes a week to get her attention.. but eventually my order is placed.
A few days ago BoxPaq notifies me my new RO membrane has arrived. It took a lot of work to have them carefully guide my delicate part thru their countries rough handling customs agents… but they do a great job. Rafael is the guy who runs the company and he personally babysat my package all the way to Luperon. He is amazing and I love BoxPaq.
What kind of completely shocked me when it arrived though… is that despite my abundant clarity with AquMaxx they did not send me a membrane ready to go inside a casing… they sent me only the raw membrane…??!!!!! With no casing… and not ready to install.
OK fine…. well Grrrrr to them.
If we make the leap of faith that despite the casing I have with the big scary warning label saying… DANGER do not open this casing… severe injury and damage may result… no user serviceable parts inside…. Maybe this is something I am expected to service myself. Or I am going to be forced into servicing if I want to or not.
It would have been just peachy keen if the company had bothered to tell me that they were sending only a raw membrane… and just lovely if they had bothered to send any kind of instruction diagrams or information on how to do this myself… but alas… the terribly run company does not believe in either good communication… competence…. or providing their customers with useful information.
So yesterday… I decided to go in blind, change it myself. Lexi is a smart girl and pretty good service engineer and I have tackled hundreds of far more complicated systems in the past I knew nothing about… lets face this one. Although my background in robotics and industrial automation focused far more on computers and PLC programming and conveyance systems… how different could a water maker be… pffft… childs play.
My concern is that the cylinder (Casing) is sealed to be able to resist 2000 pounds of internal water pressure and the seals… whatever they may be or look like… must be able to seal perfectly enough to prevent molecules of salt from leaking into the fresh water outflow. I have no idea what the seals are… how they are made… how they are compressed to form a molecular tight seal able to withstand 2000 pounds of pressure, and of course, AquaMaxx does not send new replacement seals or any information about them.
Screw it… we are girls… we are smart strong and capable… lets do this crazy thing…
Removing the casing from the system was easy enough, a simple mechanical thing to do. We got it out on deck to examine it. There were 2 Allen key screws in each end… hmmm… they seemed to be securing some type of metal half moon pins or clips into a groove in the sidewall. Lets remove them… all good…
and then… hmm… now what… ?
Well some pulling and tugging and careful examination reveals no further retaining devices… and the internal end cap seemed to move just a bit. Eventually we pull it out… and reveal the raw the RO membrane inside… (I had no idea what they looked like before) … and interestingly… the old one appeared to be in good shape… no visible cracks or tears to explain the high PPM count I could not get down with cleaning agents.
Interestingly… this whole process was not so hard… if you already know what you are doing and what you will find… this would have been simple enough. What concerned me though was still the seals… it seemed there was just 2 simple rubber O-rings on the side of the end cap and a single O-ring inside the center nipple that prevents salt water from getting to center in the fresh water outflow… and I did not have replacements.. and the ones there seemed covered in some kind of goo… like jelly or grease… but I don’t know what kind.
I was gentle and kind with the endcap and very careful not to contaminate it. I replaced it exactly as I found it, and prayed it would work.
I reinserted the membrane into the system yesterday. I pumped it up with fresh water and tried to bleed out as much air as I could. Tightened the high pressure hoses and prayed for victory. The universe is a nasty cruel place always looking to throw curve balls at all of us and I could only wonder if this was going to work.
Well…. super exciting news…. we just got back from the outer channel this morning to run the water maker and pray…
IT WORKS… WE WIN… SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GIRLS… VICTORY… CAPTAIN LEXI WINS AGAIN… YAY….!!!!!!
We ran the water maker this morning and it pressurized nicely. To understand a bit more for those of you who have never had a water maker before… we have a TDS meter that will measure the Parts Per Million of solid particles in the water. Acceptable standard for drinking water is below 500ppm… our old water maker was up to 750ppm… and cleaning it did not improve things. The new system this morning started out at 620ppm and quickly climbed down 480ppm and after a ten minute run we got our count down to a respectable 350ppm. YAY…. the seals held…. The universe does not hate me today. Everything worked out fine without a hitch… its a miracle.
WildChild can produce her own quality drinking water again… which will be very important when we leave here for parts unknown in 2 more months.
YAY…
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Cleaning the Hull
I am sure you have read some of my previous blogs about how bad the water in the bay of Luperon is. It is the most amazing and dirty polluted water I have ever seen. Locals think nothing about pouring raw gasoline oil and diesel straight into the bay. The water around the dinghy dock usually has a nice rainbow shine on the surface.
BUT… the more pertinent thing for us sailors is how fertile all the organics make the water in Luperon bay. The growth rate on our boat hulls is simply AMAZING….! When you are sitting around inside your boat at night and the wind is calm you can heard all the little water creatures making your hull their home clicking and clacking away. It sounds like a bowl of rice crispies when you pour the milk on them…. really… you can hear it…!
I understand how boats deteriorate so quickly in this harbour. It doesn’t take long for your boat to lose its abilities. Barnacles grow so quickly on your prop it looses thrust capability fast. The hull gets so thick with growth your water friction numbers skyrocket your sleek hull into barge category in a hurry.
Some sailors here say… meh… no worries… just ignore the growth… no worries… if you clean your hull you are just losing bottom paint for no reason. Just scrape it when you are ready to go.
Well… that’s one approach.
Sailor Andre is one of those sailors though. His boat is on the hard now for a new bottom painting. His girl Moon Flower sat in this bay for 1 year without getting her hull cleaned. He had to use a grinder to get the barnacles the size of golf balls off his hull. The growth had adhered so strong to his hull it would have never scraped off, power tools were necessary.
BUT…. this ignore the growth theory is not my opinion for my girl.
I have determined that any boat hull in Luperon bay should be cleaned every 3 weeks to be good…. and you can push it to 4 weeks if you really want to and still be ok… if you wait 6 weeks the barnacles and growth will be hard to remove so personally I don’t risk it. Not for WildChild anyway.
WildChild stays ready to sail in tip top shape at all times. I never let her maintenance fall behind because of laziness… not my style.
Now I can hear you thinking… “oh Lexi… you gotta be so wrong… you are such a worrier about nothing…”
Maybe… but let me show you.
AND… this was WildChild’s hull just this morning… 4 weeks after the above picture was taken…
YEP…. No trick… No Joke… This is the actual true honest camera footage. This is the Luperon effect. Literally an inch of growth in 1 month. I am not kidding… it really is this bad here.
Now the good news is… that because the growth has not really had enough time to dig into the bottom paint yet… this stuff does just scrape off easily enough. So if you clean your hull every 4 weeks like we do it only takes about 2 hours to clean it. The prop takes quite a bit of time to clean because of the odd angles and the barnacles really seem to dig onto the brass pretty quickly. Interestingly we gained 1.5 knots of motoring speed at the same rpm’s just from cleaning our little folding prop. It really does make a big difference.
I can’t help but wonder why these little berry pod thingies love my boot stripe so much…? What is it about Gel-Cote that just tastes so great for them…? They are yucky slimy things that I do not ever want to touch with my bare hands.
While swimming and scraping you can see large chunks of growth falling away to the bottom and small fish coming in to feed on the little water maggot thingies that live in there.
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Captain Lexi’s Inconvenient Heart Condition
So as you can probably imagine… with my heart condition… free diving is not exactly a good idea for me. Free diving and exerting myself strenuously scraping my hull is an even worse idea for me. The chances of me passing out underwater are actually pretty high. I cannot trust my brain to hold my blood pressure properly.
One of the things we do is to loop a bunch of ropes along the length of the hull so that when I come up for air I can grab on to something and relax… get my heart rate back down and catch my breath. If I feel myself going light headed I can hook my arms over a loop and pray I am still above water when I wake up.
Well… this morning it happened.
I was cleaning the keel…. I was wearing my rather buoyant wetsuit… I did not have any diving weights… so I was having to use my fins to swim kick my way down and vigorously scraping as I went down deeper and deeper. My head was below my heart and the exertion sent my heart rate sky rocketing.
I was 8 feet down at the bottom of the keel when suddenly I could feel it… my head started to feel funny…
I pushed off and let my buoyancy bring me to the surface as I held tight to keep my mouth closed… grabbed the rope and called for Elena nearby…
I could feel my heart rate fibrilating wildly and my head went spinney and white spots began to enter my vision… I swam back to the swim ladder on the back of the boat and hooked my armpits over the rung above the water and ducked my head forward. Elena was behind me holding me into the ladder so I didn’t fall backwards.
I could do nothing but try to relax and wait to see if my brain would save me or let me feint.
I vomited… I started vomiting uncontrollably. This happens sometimes when my blood pressure falls… the stomach muscles relax and cannot hold themselves closed and my tummy upchucks. Semi-conscious I vomited about 3 or 4 times.. (I don’t remember)… Elena says I did not pass out.
I told her its bad… I gotta get out… and with the last of my dying strength scrambled up the ladder and passed out in the cockpit. I woke up with the horrible feeling I get sometimes when its really bad… it feels like a heart attack… as the body fights back and my heart rate just goes wild trying to save me. I’m not sure how many times I went out or for how long but eventually my body regulated itself again and I came back.
Maybe I shouldn’t dive the keel anymore… maybe…
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Those Water Maggot Thingies
One of the things I personally just hate is bugs crawling on my skin. Just hate it..! and I really hate having creepy crawlies on my private areas… it is just gross supper gross and way too gross… YUCK..!
Well… when you clean the hull… it is full of millions and millions of these little creepy wiggly water maggot thingies… and they get all over you. Like when you come up when your are done they are crawling all over you like a second living wiggling skin.
OH YUCK… the very thought just disgusts me. The stuff of my nightmares.
Imagine them trying to creep into your cooter or your butt crack… ugh…
As you can imagine… cleaning my hull in Luperon is not one of my favorite things to do in my life. I never minded cleaning the hull before I got here though. The Bahamas waters are amazing and clear.
OK sailors…. this was a long post… I know… but it has been an interesting few days… and I always try to share the interesting stories with you.
Cheers sailor fans
Captain Lexi the exhausted but recovering now…
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