Mother Nature is good at heavy lifting. She effortlessly—and depending on where you sail, fairly regularly—delivers thousands of gallons of precious drinking water directly to the decks of our sailboats. All that work and water needn’t go down the drain
To harvest rain, on our 36-foot Morris Justine, Sundance, we’ve installed Y-valves in the deck scupper hoses. Most of the time, the valves are positioned to let rain, wash, and spray pass directly from deck to sea. But when we swing the valves to their catchment position, rainwater is diverted to our water tanks.
Rain catchment systems have been in use ever since the first sailboat went on a voyage. Sailors were just as thirsty then as they are now. And while a bottle o’
