Water, water everywhere
Rhapsode
Thu 18 Nov 2010 12:57
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08 02N 23 36W
When we sailed from Santiago we left with 350
litres of water in our tanks. Taking a conservative 30 days for the passage that
would give us just under 12 litres of water per day between us. Enough
to live on. We also had around 25 litres of long life milk and I have a few
litres of water tucked away for a rainy day (shouldn't that be for a dry
day?!!).
We couldn't have spared water for showers or to
rinse out my salty shorts so we would have been quite smelly by the time we
reached Salvador, but we would have reached it without dying from
thirst.
The shortage of water came because we were told
that the water in Santiago was not drinkable. We supposed that the local people
drank it cos the water in the shops were generally no more than 1 litre bottles
but we didn't want to take the risk of tummy upsets.
So off we went and put Minnie and her musical
ensemble to work. We had several hours of sailing down the coast of the island
so had she gone on strike we could have stopped and bought up all the water we
could get our hands on but she performed perfectly. Working non-stop for 36
hours we filled up all the tanks and now we keep them topped up every day. This
means we always have more than 500 litres of water on board. Given a now
conservative 25 days to complete the passage we have 20 litres of water per
day between us
Almost enough for the occasional shower and a
'Rinsing of the Shorts' ceremony.
Andrew mentioned to me yesterday that what he
really missed was a pub lunch with a cheese and pickle sandwich. That brought me
a vision of pork pies and jars of mustard dancing along a la Disney's The
Sorcerer's Apprentice.
I asked Michael what he missed the most.He said
he'd wished Michaela could have come down to visit us for a few
days.
A true romantic. Every family should have
one!
P, M & A
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