Water, Water Everywhere ...

The crystal-clear water of the Exumas (that's our anchor in 10'), but you can't drink it!

Unless you're from Flint, Michigan, or perhaps somewhere in the western states at the height of summer, in the U.S., people tend to take the availability of limitless fresh water for granted.

Not so here in the Bahamas. It's not uncommon for marinas to charge $0.50 a gallon for "reverse osmosis water," i.e., water that's been desalinated and is (at least in theory) safe for human consumption.

So, water conservation aboard Symbiosis is part of our daily routine. We use seawater to clean dishes and do most of the washing, just using a spritz of fresh water at the end to remove the saltiness. And, when we get a chance for free or cheap fresh water to fill the boat's 90-gallon tank, we seize it.

Perhaps we're a bit too eager: The saga of the foul water in our tank may or may not have started at a marina in Nassau. There, the water was cheap and we topped off our depleted tank, only to find out later that it was considered "not potable." We asked around and other cruisers who had been around the block  -- and who didn't seem concerned with filling their tanks from the same source -- assured us it was just fine for drinking. That left me temporarily reassured.

A week later, on the advice of another old hand, we took just 5 gallons from a cistern at Norman's Cay. And a few days later, several gallons of reverse osmosis (R.O.) water from Highbourne marina. About this time, it presented an unpleasant smell, tasted bad and had a slight oily sheen to it. We were putting it through our water filter for drinking, but it was still difficult to drink.

It wasn't making us sick, just unpleasant to deal with while we cruised the Exumas, a place where the basics, such as fresh water, are even harder to come by than in the rest of the Bahamas. In short, we could have dumped our foul water, but we might not have been able to replenish it for some weeks, so instead we decided to put up with it.

Here we are at Emerald Bay Marina, just short of Georgetown -- a nicely protected place to wait out yet another westerly blow. The water is $0.40/gallon on top of a 10% service charge. Expensive still, but enough was enough with this agua! We poured bleach into the remaining 40 gallons or so in the tank, drained it,  rinsed, repeated, until it was running clean. Still, we didn't waste the water -- using the rinse water to wash Symby's topsides, which had become encrusted with salt from our recent offshore passages.

Where did the bad water come from? We still don't know for sure. We ran into the guy at Nassau who assured us the water there was good. He had also been to the same marina (Highbourne) where we took water and he insisted that's where the foul-smelling stuff came from. I have my doubts. We filled one extra 5 gallon jug with the Highbourne water and it was just fine 2 weeks later (I checked). Or perhaps it was that cistern on Norman's, although it seems hard to believe that just 5 gallons could have so badly contaminated the other 85.

The water is running clean, but putting it through the filter for drinking still produces the unpleasant smell and taste. I think the bad water has now thoroughly funked up the filter. So, tomorrow my mission is to change the filter cartridges!