Tele-engineering
Telemedicine had a slow start in the 1990’s and finally came of age in the pandemic. It transformed the delivery of healthcare around the time my medical career came to an end. Little did I expect to become the un-tech technician fumbling around with a screw driver in paradise whilst bigger brains back home directed the surgery.
All ships need water to keep the crew happy, healthy and clean. For the first time ever we have been on short rations as we are now finally cruising beyond the boundaries of safe, drinkable water at every port. Since Cuba we have been managing on just 6 litres a day between us and at that rate of consumption we had enough stored on board to get us to Panama so long as no freshwater showers or clothes rinses were taken. Here we can’t just anchor off the mouth of a mountain stream and fill the tanks with fresh water.
We had tried to prepare for the day we needed to make our own water by installing a desalination plant when we built the boat in 2006 but we never needed to commission it as we have always cruised where pure water is abundant. Once commissioned the delicate osmotic membrane has to be carefully maintained and so it’s not something you casually do just to see if it works.
By the time we got to the south coast of Cuba water rationing was becoming tiresome so we took the decision to flick the switch and turn seawater into refreshing showers and cold drinks. Sadly, flicking a switch on a boat doesn’t always work the way it should and a water maker is a complicated jumble of pumps, wires, pipes, relays and solenoids spiralling out of our workroom into the bilges and the tanks scattered around the boat.
Without expectation of success, armed with a multimeter and an adjustable spanner, I set about tracing the numerous faults. I’m not by nature a contortionist but the dripping sweat helped me squeeze into the most unlikely spaces until I emerged with two major faults found. The priming pump wasn’t priming and the high pressure pump wasn’t firing up.
The priming plump needed to be shifted to a location below the waterline but that’s not an easy task when space is at a premium. Eventually I fathomed a way to re-site it with the tools and hoses I had on board but there was still the issue with the high pressure pump which was as dead as a dodo.
Trying to understand a circuit diagram is not an easy task for a jobbing medic but I figured out that if I hot wired the solenoid I could bypass the relays in the control box but would that risk screwing up the whole machine? Time to call in the virtual white overalls and so I dialled up one of Shimshal’s many former systems engineers.
Thanks to Elon Musk’s Starlink we were soon in WhatsApp contact with chief engineer Tim (served on Shimshal in 2017) who pondered our problem over his porridge. Tim gave me the courage to bypass the control box relay.
Today was the perfect day to operate, as we were safely moored in gin clear water which would make great drinking water with a little help from osmosis. I slithered into the bilge and managed to slide the hot-wire onto the terminals of the solenoid. I then fed the wire back to a spare switch on our main 24 volt control panel and flicked the switch. The solenoid clicked suggesting that it might just work. Back in the workroom I reassembled the Control box after photographing the failed relay then nervously set about the startup procedure. Turn down the pressure control valve. Switch on the 24 volt supply, switch on the control box, open the seacock, start the primer pump, flick the new hot-wire switch and turn on the high pressure pump at the control box for good measure. All pumps were working and I bled the air out of the filters and checked that brine was being discharged overboard. All that remained was to turn up the pressure to a frighteningly high 850psi and then taste the product. The salinity light went from red to green and fresh water started to flow. Meanwhile Sally had the floorboards up and her ear pressed to the tank. Miraculously she could hear 70 litres an hour of pure water splashing into the tank.
Flushed with success we washed salt crusted clothes, showered ourselves and rinsed the dishes in glorious pure water. The days of water rationing are over and tele-engineering has come of age!