Volvo Ocean Race – No water maker is a big problem
by Volvo Ocean Race on 22 Apr 2015
Dongfe?ng Race ?Team - Volvo Ocean Race 2015 Sam Greenfield / Volvo Ocean Race
Twenty-four hours into leg six of the Volvo Ocean Race and Dongfeng Race Team suffered another setback. Not as immediately devastating as breaking the mast, but with potential serious consequences. Dongfeng OBR, Sam Greenfield, tweeted from the boat: “Broken water maker. No more fresh onboard. Thirsty crew. Bad.”
“Surrounded by water we can’t drink…unless we pump.” Sam Greenfield
The VO65 is fitted with an electric water maker turning the salt water they are sailing through into drinkable water, as a backup they have a manual one but the effort required to produce adequate supplies to not only to rehydrate but to prep the freeze-dried foot, is mind-boggling, a needless distraction from racing, but essential as our Boat Captain put it into perspective “The crew will need to pump approximately 8-9 hours a day to make enough water.”
Sam takes up the story: “The velocity of water spurting from the seal was a stern enough indicator to break out the emergency hand pump. Black, Eric, Thomas and I took about an hour and a half yesterday to hand-pump everyone’s water bottle and enough for dinner. The hand pump claims to be capable of 4.5 litres per hour but that is hardly the case.”
Now it’s a case of ‘all hands to the pump’ – excuse the pun, as Charles Caudrelier and the guys try to fix the water maker supported by the shore team: “They know what the problem is,” said Neil Graham, Technical Director. (Watch video from onboard as Charles explains). “We’re waiting for confirmation form the boat but Kevin should have attempted a repair on the Membrane Pressure Vessel. The plan was to apply some glue and then wrap the end of the vessel, where the leak is, in carbon fibre laminate, to seal it.” We’re hoping our Mr Fixit, Kevin Escoffier, can work his magic once again.
In the meantime, the determined men on board have to keep pumping:
“Funny how once you lose access to something as simple as drinkable water in the Atlantic Ocean you start to notice all of the water you can’t drink,” wrote Sam. “The hand-powered Katadyn Survivor fresh water pump claims to have a fresh water-producing capacity of 4.5 litres per hour. More accurately, the Katadyn Survivor requires some odd 35 litres of water and 15 minutes time to produce a single litre of drinkable water, plus a small piece of your soul. By the time I cap a bottle my arms are burning and my mouth is dry and as I write this, having just pumped three 1.5 litre bottles alongside Horace, I’m experiencing both sensations. Until Kevin and Charles perform a miracle on our primary water maker, the Katadyn Survivor is our lifeline.”
Leg six: Brazil to Newport (5,000nm)
Days at sea: 2?
Boat speed: 11.5 knots ?
Distance to finish: 4,757nm?
Position in fleet: fifth, 1.2nm behind leader MAPFRE with just 3.2nm separating the fleet.
Sam’s full blog
I climbed Mount Katahdin once.
In short, it sucked.
It was 1997.
I wouldn’t develop any semblance of ‘junior varsity’ athleticism until many years later in high school and I hadn’t yet discovered my sense of admiration for the great outdoors or the United States Park System.
Nope. I was one of those ‘husky’ kids at summer camp with a bowl cut and two tape cassettes to my name: Mace and the Spice Girls.
And Mount Katahdin was –and unless I’m mistaken remains- the tallest mountain in the state of Maine, in America’s Northeast.
Mount Katahdin is only 5,270 feet high (1,606 meters), but for me in 1997 it may have well been Everest.
I vividly remember being the slowest camper up the mountain and although I don’t remember the name of that unfortunate counselor –let’s call her my angel Sherpa- assigned to escort me and the really fat the whole way up and down, I do remember her frustration at my habit of standing up water in the pristine rivers as she tried to fill her canteen.
I didn’t help myself much in those days.
It was the hardest, most formative and character building day-hike of my pre-pubescent years.
So you can understand my mix of horror and delight when today the casing on our electric water maker sprung a fatal leak and Eric and I cracked open the emergency compartment and pulled out a brutal looking hand-powered device called the Kataydin Survivor-35.
Was this some kind of sick joke?
It felt like summer camp 1997 all over again.
Only, this time, instead of a cushy day hike in Maine it was day one of a three-week race from Brazil to the Northeast United States across one of the word’s largest expanses of undrinkable water.
Funny how once you lose access to something as simple as drinkable water in the Atlantic Ocean you start to notice of all the water you can’t drink.
The Kataydin Survivor-35 fresh water pump claims to have a fresh water-producing capacity of 4.5 liters per hour.
I call shenanigans.
More accurately, the Survivor-35 requires some odd 35 liters of water and 15 minutes time to produce a single liter of drinkable water, plus a small piece of your soul.
By the time I cap a bottle my arms are burning and my mouth is dry and as I write this, having just pumped three 1.5 L bottles alongside Horace, I’m experiencing both sensations.
Now let’s do some math: three to four bottles are required alone to make a freeze dry meal.
The guys eat three meals a day.
There are nine of us onboard.
Each of us can ‘survive’ on a single bottle of water a day.
That’s 18 bottles, so 4.5 hours of pumping per day just to get by.
And until Kevin and Charles perform a miracle on our primary water maker the Kataydin Survivor-35 is our lifeline and summer camp 1997 doesn’t seem all that bad.
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