Most mornings I try to get at least one maintenance project done to keep Harmonie in ship-shape. Today’s project was to change the intake filter on the watermaker.  A pretty simple project, swapping out the old filter for a new one.  This is the filter than catches little bits of “stuff” that are in the incoming saltwater to keep it from contaminating the main reverse osmosis membranes.

Of course, on a boat there is no such thing as a “simple” project.  As I was reinstalling the filter I also worked to track down a tiny saltwater leak.  I found it in a few minutes on a high pressure line that is part of the watermaker system.  This kind of fitting doesn’t often leak, and when they do it is not normally something you can just tighten and make better.  Sure enough, I found a crack in the flared sealing surface. Taking it apart to inspect it just made it even worse, now the watermaker high pressure pump puts out a spray of saltwater across the engine room when it is running. This puts our water maker out of commission until a replacement high pressure hose can be obtained.

Good news, we have a mostly full fresh water tank.  Almost 700 liters of water will keep us going for quite a while.  More good news, there is a hydraulic hose fabricator on St Thomas, just 50 miles east of here who makes hoses like this.

It was our plan to head that direction anyway, now we just have a significantly higher motivation to get there.  We are waiting for delivery of the renewed documentation from the US Coast Guard, essentially Harmonie‘s registration paperwork.  As soon as that arrives here in Culebra, in a day or two, we’ll be headed off to the (relatively) big city of Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas.