What Works... The Best of Both Worlds
The Hamlin’s came back from cruising the islands this year with a wish list for their boat Fusio among them was a change to their watermaker setup. While their watermaker worked fine, the generator to power the 230V system was letting them down, there had
to be a better way, here’s their story.
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Approximately 5 years ago, we put an Open Ocean water maker in Fusio. As a result we converted two of our three water tanks into diesel tanks. Our water maker is electric driven 230V. We have a 3.5Kva Generator that for the first 4 years worked extremely
well. The minute we left for off-shore, the generator played up. For the whole 6 months we were away, we experienced problems with making water (not due to the water maker, but the generator). |
Fusio Under Sail
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While we were very happy with the 240V system, it produces over 200l per hour, if we couldn’t get 230V to run it we were in trouble. We investigated a dual powered water maker system with Open Ocean in Opua. The answer to a dual system was yes so we installed an engine driven pump onto the main engine, and also purchased a brand new generator. |
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The benefits of both are as follows:-
Electric driven pump (Generator) 1) Great to use when you are sailing. 2) If you are sitting in a bay for a period of time you can use the generator to make water 3) You can run your battery charger while you are running your generator 4) It saves running hours on your main motor. (less diesel in a generator) 
Engine Drive High Pressure Pump Installed
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High Pressure and Low Pressure switching valves
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Motor Driven pump
1) We found in the Islands, we were motoring a lot between anchorages, rather than sailing, so to make water off the motor would certainly be beneficial.
The main point of the dual system for us personally, is that we don’t carry a great volume of water for the size of our boat (especially when guests arrive). To have a backup / alternative system should hopefully cover out butt! We will let you know in a few months how
it all goes.
1) We found in the Islands, we were motoring a lot between anchorages, rather than sailing, so to make water off the motor would certainly be beneficial.
The main point of the dual system for us personally, is that we don’t carry a great volume of water for the size of our boat (especially when guests arrive). To have a backup / alternative system should hopefully cover out butt! We will let you know in a few months how
it all goes.