this is merely expanding the envelope. no life threatening situations will be encountered over a lack of fresh water.
the issue is the amount of fresh water i can haul in a yak when camping on deserted (in both senses of the word) barrier islands on the atlantic coast of georgia.
with the canoe, water is not an issue but the yak gives me greater range and the ability to counter adverse winds, waves and tides much easier than the canoe does and the yak offers access to areas where the power boat can't go due to surf in the anchorage.
there is, for all practical purposes, an unlimited amount of driftwood on the beaches so a fuel source is not an issue. we often burn a small fire all day as a bug repellent - skeeters and no-see-ums can be quite agressive here. a fresh water yield seems a natural companion to the fuel use.
solar distillation setups seem to require a large area, produces low yields and i'm not wild about digging up what little flora anchors the non-tidal shoreline in order to produce water.
there's lots of beach at low tide but every 6.5 hours, there is an 8 ft swing in water level so what's bare at 8am has up to 8 feet of water over it at 2:30pm and bare again at 9pm.
could be only 6.5 feet or up to 10 feet depending on astrological scenarios but could be more or less depending on wind direction.
reverse osmosis bankrupts the budget - not to mention the sheer monotony of pumping for hours on end for the yield of a few liters.
i have a 3 liter pot that fits in the hatch for which i could add an outlet to the lid. perhaps i could get a bigger pot but backyard experimentation will be necessary to ascertain the yield.
sure seems that someone would have already solved that problem: ~3 liters a day, small fire all day (and part of the night).
i'll keep looking.
if someone has a better idea (i.e. a better solar solution - i'm in the deep south so sun light is not an issue - complexity of the setup could be), i'm willing to listen.