TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums US VI and Puerto Rico SVI Bareboat/Water refill

Doing a bareboat with SailCaribe in Dec 6 on a cat with only a 79 gal water tank. We have 6 crew and 9 days on board. Our intention was a tour through Culebra/Culebrita then to Vieques but we're not finding much for refilling the water tanks on that itinerary.

What would you folks recommend for an itinerary with at least one place to stop along the way? 79 gallons just seems REALLY small when our last BVI trip had 8 people, 7 days and we went through about 300 gallons.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I hope to heaven you don't have electric heads that use your fresh water! We had 8 on a cat with 150 gallons and some of our more inexperienced crew did not realize how much water they were using. We were almost empty after only around two and a half days....

That being said, I have heard that there are very few places - if any - to refill.

Just re-read a message from my friend Evan (sail2wind on here) that says "we stay until we run out of water" - unless I am mistaken....I don't think you can refill at all in the SVI.

Really no where to fill tanks between Fajardo and St. Thomas at this time (I read somewhere that they are working on a solution to that). We bought a bunch of gallon jugs for drinking water and even to rinse dishes in a pinch - and we also went to the USVI and refilled out tanks there. However, going to the USVI and back from the SVIs isn't a quick trip and I'd only recommend that if you actually want to go to the USVI. You could also bring some jerry cans filled with water and then refill them ashore when they are empty. Maybe Sailcaribe has some lying around for that purpose. Otherwise conserve water or you might find yourself making a mid-trip return to Fajardo to refill the tanks.

Matt

P.S. Not sure if it's your cup of tea, but we took a slip at Yacht Haven Grande in St. Thomas on our last trip to the islands and had a nice relaxing (and civilized) time there. It wouldn't be a bad mid-trip stop to refill tanks, do some laundry, swim in the pool, have a good meal or two ashore, restock provisions, etc... The only issue may be if the winds are up it can be a rough trip from the SVIs - but the trip back is a downwind sleigh ride.

In Culebra you could anchor in Ensenada Honda close to town and take your dinghy over to the Dinghy Dock restaurant and purchase water from them.
An easy way to do it would be to fill up the dinghy with water and rig a 12V water pump with or without sediment filter and pump it into your tanks

ligot, I would check your boats capacity 79 gallons does not sound right for a cat. Are you sure there are not 2-79 gallon tanks. We are a 40' mono which carries 120 gallons and we can last 5 days easy. We also have 2- 5 gallon collapsible showers (Walmart). The are great and left in the sun, you get a pretty warm shower. We can get 2 showers out of each. Fajardo is the closest place to get water.

Chartering from Sail Caribe I am assuming it a Lagoon? 79 Gallons would be one tank. The second tank is an option. I would assume Jim ordered the boat with both tanks. I would confirm with them. If you are that worried aobut it go to WalMart and buy some cheap 5 gallon collapsable wate containers and take them with you filled.

We did the same trip this past Jan. The only place we found to fill up with water was, like sail445 said, in Culebra at the Dingy Dock bar. We filled up the two 30 gallon jerry cans we had from a spigot and shuttled them back to the boat via our dingy. Made 3 trips. This is a two person job as hauling the cans from dingy to boat is heavy work.

30 gallons, 8 lbs per gallon = 240 lbs, easier to sail to Fajardo <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

Or a small water pump so you don't have to lift the full drums out of the dinghy

Or a crew mate who doesn't wash her hair everyday so you don't have to refill in the first place!

Thanks for all the feedback. I did double check and the specs for the 2016 Lagoon 400 on SailCaribe shows a 79 gal capacity. Even checked to see if it had a water maker but it doesn't show it in the equipment. In my experience though, 79 gal is REALLY small.

I think we're going to check with SC and hope they have 2 - 5 gal jerry cans and we'll try to fill them every time we go ashore. It is both an experienced and low maintenance crew so I'm sure we can both conserve and refill in increments as best we can.

The resort is tempting, on our last BVI trip we took 1 day on the dock at Scrub and really enjoyed the break. However I'm not sure it's worth the trip over to USVI. We'll run it by the crew though.

BTW, I was doing the same calcs as Sail2wind ... 30 gallons is HUGE and way too heavy to move around a dinghy and then haul on board. And filling the dinghy is clever but ... never gonna happen.

Thanks again for the feedback, if there are any suggestions beyond the obvious (bioluminescent bay etc) feel free to chime in.

Dinghy Dock, on Ensenada Honda in Dewey. has a Rumba band on Saturday nights. It's called Wiki and they will have you up and boogieing...I love their whole fried snapper, too.

LINK Facebook users can 'like' Culebra Cruisers for helpful info.

We just chartered Big Papa Lulu from CYOA, which has a water-maker.
This was IDEAL in the SVI.
The cockpit ice-maker was sweet too. I am not fond of chasing ice from anchorage to anchorage, and planning every stop around the possibility of getting ice.

Like the rest said, you can get water in Fajardo at the fuel dock in Del Rey.

Curious about water and ice makers. Seems standard on more and more charter boats. Can you run them without the generator running? And if so, how hard do they hit the batteries?

Was the taste of the water and ice OK? And how much ice were you making? Is this just a "ice for your G&T" thing or were you keeping a cooler full of Presidentes cold?

Watermaker requires the generator on Big Papa Lulu.

The watermaker on CYOA's Big Papa Lulu makes 25 gallons an hour. I don't know the exact current draw, but am guessing that it's comparable to an air-conditioner unit or two.
Water and ice tastes fine, though we bought bottled water before we knew we'd be in Big Papa, so we drank it.

We tried to keep water topped-off because I'm of a conservative nature, and if we had a generator or water maker problem I wanted to make sure we had a pretty full tank of water. Our strategy became to run the generator from 3pm-6pm and make water. Then we turned the watermaker off and made cool air with the AC units while cooking, and to get the cabins cool for sleeping. Running the watermaker and the AC units all at the same time is not recommended. Boats generators are generally not sized for the maximum possible load.

The ice-maker on Big Papa would keep a cooler cool with ice, and also make enough to do frozen drinks or drinks with ice. Big Papa also had a cockpit fridge, so keeping beer cold didn't require a cooler. To supplement cooling the drinks in the cockpit cooler we also made a gallon jug of ice every night in the freezer.

The icemaker drew 25 amps at 12 volts, so it was not a huge power hog (on the grand scheme of things). We ran the microwave on the inverter once, and it took 100 amps at 12 volts! Yikes!

We used 100 gallons of Diesel in 9 days, and filled up at Del Rey for $270. Big Papa holds 112 gallons, and I was getting a little nervous on the last day. This consumption seems pretty frugal to me, considering we were running the generator about 16 hours a day and also used the engines some. I'd MUCH rather have this set-up than be worrying the whole trip about where my next water stop is, and where I can get ice next. Water and ice are not cheap or available, and trading them for a few dollars in Diesel fuel seemed like a good deal to me.

Hope that helps!

Walt, diesel was only $2.70 a gallon in P.R.? It's upward of $5 in BVI.
We burn less then a 1/2 gallon running the generator. You're right on overloading, never a good idea.

Walt--thanks for the thorough explanation. We've finally decided to give CYOA a try and we're on their new Mahe 36 "Flyer" for 10 days in January. She has water and ice makers. Not really needed for our USVI/BVI itinerary but will be a nice amenity.

Evan - yes. I was shocked to only pay $2.69/gallon for Diesel on the water at Del Rey PR. Very cheap. Almost worth sailing down there to fill up!

Oh - errata on the above - Big Papa has a 124 gallon fuel tank (not 112), so I was not quite as close to sucking air as I thought.

Eric,

Welcome to the family, the water maker that is in Flyer is different than the one we put in Big PaPa Lulu. It's a 12 volt unit. It makes 15 gallons an hour. It can be run while your underway using alternator power or when your running the genset from excess capacity of the battery charger.

On our boats with water makers we also install a drinking water quality filtration system, a sediment filter, carbon filter and UV light that puts pottable water at every faucet in the boat. No more bottled water. Flyer has a very comparable ice maker to Big Papa Lulu. It has a typical front load fridge and the optional front load freezer.

Jay

Thanks Capt. Jay. Been reading your helpful posts for years and we're looking forward to meeting you and the CYOA team.
Eric

Ligot, I just noticed your post from the summer. Clean spring water is available from a cistern at the lighthouse on Culebrita. The valve is on the northeast corner of the building. There is usually a hose that runs down to the beach. Let it run for a minute to wash out spiders and scorpions. If you have a hose onboard, you can connect yours to it and fill directly to the boat's deck fills. If not, you'll need jerry cans. Either way, the water will gravity feed quickly. (Sort of similar to Green Cay in the Bahamas, if you've been.) There's a meter at the hose fitting. It's 15 cents per gallon. You need to leave payment in the coffee can that's there. (Honor system, make your own change - sometimes tough because of the multiple currencies.) They come from Fajardo weekly to collect. Good luck.

We're back in the BVI after 2 weeks in the SVIs/PR. Puerto Del Rey had $2.55 diesel and $2.85 gasoline. Dinghy Dock reopened 10/31, but you could get water fills while they were closed. Just two of us with 95 gallons of water tankage, so we did not lug water. But, we have two 5 gallon collapsible Coleman water jugs and a siphon starter.

Cheers, RickG