Leaving Cowes for Dublin - lost all our fresh water??

This morning at 4.00 O'clock we left Cowes headed for Dublin. Finally, it seemed the consistent head winds had subsided, and the next couple days shows more favorable winds - or rather none as it runs out. So we are steaming our way towards Lands End to eventually head north towards Dublin.

We left as early as we did to catch the outgoing tide down through the narrow straight of water (called "The Solent") between Isle of Wight and the mainland, and we managed up to 10 knots over ground at some point, while just sailing approx 6 knots through the water. So that was a good decision.

Since then we have entered the open water in the wider part of the English channel and the currents are only +/- 2 knots out here. After exercising our sails for a couple hours this morning, the winds have died down and we are sailing by engine again. Big, slow rolling waves from southwest are against us, but they are so soft that they are hardly making any impact.

And by-the-way: We have lost all our fresh water! Yes, after leaving The Solent we discovered that both fresh water tanks - containing approx 400 liters combined - that we filled up right before leaving - are now completely empty. I examined the bilge, the water pump, the engine room, but no trace of the water? How can 400 liters of water just disappear out of the boat (presumably)? The only explanation I can come up with is that a hose somewhere has come off and since we have pressurized water on our boat, the water pump must have pumped all the water into the bilge - trying to maintain the pressure - and the bilge pump have further transported it into the ocean. When we left Cowes we had water, 2 hours later it was gone. Really puzzling.

Fortunately we have enough bottled drinking water for the next 5 days which should get us to Dublin where we can switch to Guinness (and hopefully fix our pressurized water system as a backup).

So during the remainder of the trip we will wash and cook using seawater. We will pretend we are crossing a much bigger ocean :-)