Water (drinking)

Drinking water. I plan on 3 litres per day for all consumption and to use sea water for washing. For an 8 week passage that means 168 litres + a contingency of 20%, so 200 litres. That is a lot of 2 litre bottles! So I could use the boat tank but I am not sure of the 'health' of it. It is a bladder tank of unknown age, maintenance and volume. I mentioned this to a friend and they have been considering the same problem. Their approach is to remove the tank in the keel void on their Twister and fill the space with 1 litre tonic bottles of fresh water. If a bottle becomes unviable: leak or contamination, then they have only lost 1 litre. So cabin sole on Louisa up and bladder inspected and I have a plan. I will pump the tank out and put in a hull liner then fill the void with 5 litre flexible water bags. I will install a hatch in the sole and I am hoping to get about 50 to 100 litres in this space. A note of caution, a 5 litre flexible water bag becomes inflexible with 5 litres of water in it. With 4 litres it remains flexible and can conform to the available space. In addition I have a 30 litre canister for collecting rain water and about 70 litres of bottled water in other stowage.  

To improve water efficiency when cooking I have found the optimum pasta to water ratio by volume to be 2:1 pasta to water. After approximately 2/3 of the cooking time I add the sauce. I am working on this for rice. A tip I was given was to use a silicone spatula as this can be used to wipe any pot or pan virtually clean thereby optimising energy and water consumption and reducing washing up. I have also worked out that adding 10% sea water to water for cooking removes the need to add salt. This ratio is also suitable for rehydration but needs to be used with care. I anticipate that any rain water recovered from sail run off will be contaminated by sea salt but I will try and keep this to a minimum.

I like drinking black tea but tea is a mild diuretic and boiling water uses meths and evaporation increases. So I'll try and limit myself to 2 mugs a day. I also like hot chocolate but I'll save that for motivational purposes.

Keeping track of consumption will need to be a routine task.