Flying Colours Sailboat - Water
Purifiers are Essential!
Think you’ve got everything for your
boat? Are you sure? You’ve got rope, safety vests,
emergency flares – but what about a water purifier? You
can’t drink seawater or the water from most freshwater
lakes and rivers. If you plan a long boating trip, where
you are replenishing your drinking water from different
land sources, you want to be sure that water is safe to
drink. You need some sort of water purifier.
What’s The
Fuss?
You can survive on average three months without food.
But without water, the average person will die in a mere
three days. That’s an extreme example, granted. But in
many water sources there may be microscopic bacteria and
pathogens that can make you sick with vomiting and
diarrhea. Being dehydrated and disoriented on a boating
trip is not only no fun, it’s downright dangerous for
everyone on the boat and everyone else boating in your
path. Avoid it by getting two kinds of water purifiers,
one for freshwater and one for salt water.
Salt Water
Purifiers
• Boiling: The old water purifier standby system. This
requires a little do-it-yourself skill. You fill one
kettle with salt water. You connect two kettles with
copper tubing and boil the water. The salt stays in the
first kettle and the cleaned water gets trapped in the
steam, and then drips through the copper tube into the
empty kettle. It takes a while, and you do need a fire
source.
• Desalination Systems: This basically does the above
with much larger quantities of water at a much faster
pace. They can cost a few hundred dollars. They are
available through boating equipment stores.
• Osmotic Pressure: These are also available at boating
supply stores, and sometimes Army surplus or sporting
goods stores. There is a portable kit type available for
around $100. This usually looks more like a freeze dried
meal than a water purifier, but it has a good
reputation. The dirty water is pushed through a membrane
filter (with itty-bitty holes) and sometimes cleansed
again in chemical solutions to make clean drinkable
water. A similar kind of water purifier is called
reverse osmosis.
Brackish And
Fresh Water Purifiers
Unlike most salt water purifiers, brackish and fresh
water purifiers are a lot lighter, and cheaper. They are
not powerful enough to remove all the salt from
seawater. They can be found in camping stores, sporting
goods shops, boating supply stores and their online
equivalents.
• Ceramic Filters: Better at filtering brackish water
than ocean water (much less salt), these have only been
around for a few years and are getting easier to find,
although you might have a bit of search in front of you.
Suppliers are most easily found online. These water
purifiers are portable, so they only filter a few cups
of water at a time.
• Tablets: These are the old Army and Navy standby. They
are cheap and portable. They also don’t make the water
taste like water – it tastes more like you are drinking
out of someone’s swimming pool. In emergency situations,
though, the water will help you get to safety.
• UV Light Pen: One of the newest is a small battery
operated ultra violet penlight that purifies water in
seconds with the means of ultra violet (UV) light. These
are run on batteries. Some run on lithium batteries, and
some run on solar power charged batteries. These are the
most high tech in the world of portable water purifiers.
And they look really cool; like a streamlined phaser
from Star Trek.
To Sum Up
Whichever water purification system you choose for your
boat, look to see that it has a rating of “.2 microns”,
which means only .2 microns (read = teeny-weeny) can get
through. To be doubly sure of safe water, you could boil
it for ten minutes before purifying it, if you have the
capacity to boil water on your boat :-)
|
