Many days on board are just perfect. Really life is good living on a boat. Many things you bother with while living ashore in your 4 bedroom, 2 story house with 2 cars parked in front of it, you simply do not bother with while living on board. The simplicity of life on board brings with it the fact that you are not bothered by many things anymore. Simplicity is good. The fact you can change scenery and neighbors as you feel suit is an added bonus. But also on board you have at times (very seldom) a bad day. It can be for many reasons; perhaps your son is driving you crazy making a mess while there is no way to escape from it, or your wife is driving you even more crazy because she is your wife and that is what she is supposed to do, or for example that beautiful anchorage you wanted to stay longer has become untenable due to heavy swell and you have to raise anchor and leave, always in the middle of the night.
Well today I had a bad day. Some bad news from overseas and my day was ruined. That is for sure the single most downside of cruising, the fact that you cannot easily connect with family and close friends, be it by email, phone or in person. When things are fine with family and friends, then this is no issue and you really do not think about it too much. When things change however, when things are not so well suddenly with family or close friends, then the challenges of cruising in remote areas become quickly very clear again. A full time cruising boat is depending your location not like a home you can simply hop on a bus or a plane and close the door behind you. You will have to find at a minimum a very sheltered and safe anchorage. Even then, would I leave a boat unattended or even with my wife and son alone on board on anchorages that can become troublesome due to a simple squall? You would need a marina at best, and these you have less and less around the further you go away from mainstream areas. The marinas in the pacific are far and between compared to Europe or the States. Same for South America, like Chile, not to mention Antartica where I plan to go. Naturally that is the reason you want to go there, you do not want to see marinas there. And what on long offshore passages, days away from nearest land, no matter what the news is, you have to continue till you find safe and secure shelter. When something's happen with family or close friends, then you have to face the challenges that cruising brings with it. You cannot say I am not going to cruise around the world because if something happens to my family or close friends I want to be there for them. At least that is what we believe. You cannot because any day in life something can happen. That is life and we all know that and we cannot control that. You need to go doing the things you want to do and face the realities and the challenges as they come at you.

Well my day was ruined, I just could not get back into the good mood swing anymore. Well some people hide in comfort food when they have a bad day. So did I. I decided to hide, run away in diving into comfort food. Not the greasy fried fries with burgers type of comfort food. No, the comfort food you can only find in Holland, "Hutspot". A typical Dutch dish in where you cook potatoes, carrots and onions together and then mash them all up. Highly intellectually culinary.



That is my type of comfort food and is food I grew up with. (Virtually any kid in the North of Holland grew up with this type of food in my young years. I would not be surprised if that has all changed and more innovative dishes are brought to the table nowadays.) I made enough for two days, which should take me to Sunday, the day Heloisa comes back and I can enjoy her lovely dishes again. And it was good, real good. Real Dutch comfort food.



I have just returned from two days at sea, trying the new watermaker and the new mainsail set up. It took me several hours to get clear of shipping traffic from Panama. As I am solo now and knew I had to spend time below at the watermaker, I wanted to be far away from commercial shipping, which in all reality is not easy as they come from nearly all directions around Panama.



Europe and East Coast of South America comes from the NE, traffic to and from the East coast of the US comes from the NNE, Gulf of Mexico N and NW and so on. Besides that the first hours you crawl over the anchorages, where ships one moment are at anchor and the next moment you see a dark puff from their exhaust stacks and they have raised anchor and are moving, typically directly toward you naturally.



However after some hours we got out of the shipping lanes and far away from the coast to ensure clean seawater, meaning no hydrocarbon or chemicals present etc. Well man we are making water! Crystal clear water was pouring out of the sample tube after I had run the "first startup" procedure and purged the storage chemicals out. Bottle after bottle, pan after pan, all nice clear and tasteful water. I loaded up both tanks; 550 liters of own produced water. It gives you a good feeling, a powerful feeling; I made fresh water out of seawater! Well really all what I did was press the one start button, but still the feeling is the same. The unit, A Spectra Cape Horn Extreme watermaker I installed myself in two days. It is Spectra's simplest model and the reason I choose this one. It produces on two feed pumps 65 liters of fresh water while using 19 Amps. Well that is not bad, by any means. The low power consumption was the second reason I choose this one. It was even producing above spec. To make freshwater you pump clean (be careful not having hydrocarbons in the seawater, so stay away from ports) seawater through a membrane under relative high pressure. In our case around 5.5 bar. The pumps that are used for this are off the shelf Shurflo pumps which is good in case I need to repair or replace. This model of watermaker does not have electronics, just straight forward a few valves, in line with our philosophy on board to keep things simple. Now, you have to be comfortable with the technical aspects of watermakers, in order to choose this type, as watermakers require some flushing here and there and different types of flushing at times. In our case we will need to do this manually, selecting valves etc. If you are not comfortable with that you better select the electronic controller, which will do all that for you but comes with the added complexity of controllers, remote valves etc. I am very pleased with the performance and know we will enjoy the luxury of the water a lot. Gone are the days that the anchorage or length of stay were depending on the availability of potable water. Heloisa can take her three quick showers a day, me my two quick showers a day and Auke his once in the three weeks shower if it is up to him (but it is not up to him...).