Matt,

Just boiling water will not distill it.....unless the water vaporizes and then condenses in another container, the water will still contain impurities...... Remember the picture of grandpa's moonshine still? He boiled the brew and then ran it through a copper coil and into another vessel to condense the brew. It's the evaporation and then condensation of the vapor that takes the impurities out. If you boil a pot of water and vapor escapes, you are making the pot of water MORE impure since you are removing the volume of water but not the minerals.

This is why distilling seawater is so inefficient.....tough to do in a large scale.