on the cost of some stuff and why you need to do your math...

Our local grocery here on St Croix has a sale on water this week and on the face of it, as things go, it looks like a good deal...

At first glance.

The subject of the deal is on a cheap no brand water in 16.9 oz bottles that normally gets sold in the store for fifty cents a bottle. The actual deal is three 24 bottle cases for $10.99.

Now, considering the cost of buying 72-bottles at fifty cents a pop would add up to $36 that really is a considerable savings over the normal retail price... Hell, they're almost giving it away!

Fact is I was tempted...

On the boardwalk here in St Croix good quality water (not like the ugly brown horrible industrial sludge they sell you at the local marina/gas dock) is available for ten cents a gallon. So, how does that compare to the cheap, almost giving it away sale, for the bottled stuff?

Seventy-two 16.9 oz bottles adds up to a kiss more than nineteen gallons of water and nineteen goes into $10.99...

Let's call it fifty-seven cents a gallon which is, admittedly, cheap for bottled water but compared to the water on the boardwalk at ten cents a gallon the truth is it comes out as quite expensive.

Anyway, it's just something to keep in mind...

Water,water everywhere...

One of the first things that living on a small boat teaches you is your place in the eco-system... Unlike most land dwellers, you know exactly how much stuff you consume, how much waste you generate, how much electricity you use and how many hours of sun/wind or generator used to replace it. In other words, living on a boat gives you a clue (which I guess makes most land-dwellers clueless?).

Water for most newbies on boats is something of a panic-attack inducing conundrum as the wasteful practices ingrained in the resource wasting land dwelling model is very hard to break and trying to make these ingrained bad habits work on a cruising boat... Well, that way lies madness!

On the other hand, water IS serious stuff. We need water to live so it is something that does need to be factored in terms of how much you use, how much you actually need, how to obtain it, and how to keep it.

Throwing money at the situation with something like a watermaker or turning your boat into a sailing tanker truck seems to be the two most popular initial answers to the problem of having enough water. The real answer is getting in touch with the need/want equation and begin using what you need, rather than what you want or think you need or, in other words, get smart and waste less...


Speaking of waste and water, here is a great presentation on a perfect example of silly waste/being dumb where water is concerned and a great example on how what we think is true, simply is not.