We’ve come to the conclusion that the thing that we dislike the most about cruising in this boat—aside from the fact that it is missing a hull—is the refrigerator situation. Needing to run the engine for an hour or more twice a day in order to keep the fridge cool is a major hassle. The boat came with an AC system and an engine driven system. An expensive setup that works well on the dock or while underway, but at anchor it just sucks.
The solution is to replace the AC system with a DC, which we’ve inquired about, and found is really only about a one thousand dollar project. The problem of course is that if you start sucking down the battery power you’ve got to replace it. Which means the DC fridge system must also include a bank of solar panels. This is all on the great to-do list, but we’ve been trying hard with this boat not to overindulge. To make do with what we’ve got. But this fridge thing is finally coming to a head—something must be done.
If one person e-mails to say we should just do without refrigeration…
Of course it seems silly to complain about refrigeration woes after a day like this.
17 Comments on “Puerto Balandra—Again”
A good freezer / fridge system is close to our #1 choices cruising.
On one boat we had a seafrost AC / Engine driven system. We wanted a DC system so we didn’t have to run to engine every day to seek things cold.
We ALMOST removed the seafrost system – but didn’t 🙂 What we did was add a very strong DC system ( links below) it would get the freezer VERY cold and quickly, then engine system with the holding plate kept things frozen as we generally ran the motor every 3-4 days through moving or a battery top up. The DC system was run from a Wind generator on Boat #1, Boat #2 we had the same system ( as it was fantastic on boat #1) we powered it with Solar, we had two 130W panels and this was more than enough ( one would have done it.) In the tropics it ran about 40% of the time)
Trick for us was keeping Both systems, this way we got the benefit of the holding plate, AC and the DC Fan based system. We would use this again in a minute as it was so effective.
Units used were:
http://marine.dometicgroup.com/en/products/cooling_units_489.php
http://marine.dometicgroup.com/en/products/cooling_units_489.php?artOrigID=185&sprID=2
cheers
Dunno if it’s the same on the Mexican Mainland, but in the Sea of Cortez, it was a given that if you “noodled” (not asshole Paul Ryan Catfish-style) your fingers under the sand in the bays it was usually a pretty good guarantee you’d come up with plenty of small clams; some white wine, garlic, a bit of seawater and and some heat would yield appetizers that even the small kids would love. Only tool needed: net bag.
Did that trip VW Bus style – next time catamaran.
Pat,
I highly recommend switching to DC refrigeration. As an alternative to the solar panels, you could go with a simple Honda 2KW generator for battery charging. They are quiet, more efficient than your propulsion engine and would be a lot cheaper than solar panels. Just a thought.
Why not just install an inverter? A 1000 watt pure sine wave invertor that runs cool and silent is about 350 bucks and would run your fridge and leave you about 900 watts to spare. A modfied sine wave would be less than half that. I have an a/c fridge on my boat and it runs off the inverter all the time. You still have to charge the batteries, but it’s much easier and cheaper to install an inverter than a new refridgeration system and AC motors are quieter and more efficeint that DC motors.
We’ve got a good inverter and we can run the AC that way, but our AC is not efficient at all, on shore power it runs probably 14 hours a day.
I agree; you need milk, etc. for those kids, and can’t live without a refrigerator. Not everybody gets it.
Hello Pat and Aly. I’m Nikolai.
I would like to publish a guest post (with one link) on your great blog – bumfuzzle.com. Could you please give me the price for the placement of it?
Thank you and I look forward to your reply.
Have a nice day.
Hola Nikolai,
That would be great. The price for that is currently set at $157,000 per posting. Please let us know when you’d like to pay and run your post.
Pat and Aly
Hah!
Maybe add more insulation?
Yeah, probably wouldn’t be a bad idea at all.
Maybe an Engel is the answer you’re looking for?
http://www.engel-usa.com/
Very Reliable – power efficient and can be used as just an ice chest or even for simply storage if necessary.
I’m all about the DC refrigeration. $1k for a very easy to self-install and very efficient unit. I did it last year and if I can do it, anybody can. We used NovaKool.
Yes, you’ll need to figure out power generation for it, but small panels are cheap, and you’re often motoring from anchorage to anchorage every few days/ week anyways maybe?
Yeah I agree. We’ve got Seafrost systems on the boat now (like 20 years old), and after contacting them they told me the AC system could be easily swapped out with the current DC system, so hopefully that will work out.
I think you just want something to complain about. I run the engine on my Ford F150 for an hour a day and I get from it is to go to work and back home again, so count your blessings. If that refrigeration is as bad as it gets for you then I say you have nothing to complain about. 🙂
Thank you for the blog. I appreciate the mental break it gives me.
Two words… frigoboat
Oh, and some insulation wouldn’t hurt either. We ripped out everything down to the hull after our old AC system crapped out. Rebuilt it all, counters, sink, plumbing, insulation, boxes, everything. Total pain in the ass! Would I do it again? Not sure. Does my wife love her gourmet galley with fridge at 37 degrees and freezer at 0 degrees? Hell yes she does! And the new sink that can actually fit dishes in it vs the old double 6″ wide sinks doesn’t hurt either.
DC variable speed systems are definitely the way to go if you aren’t running a gte set 24/7. I think $1k is too low, but it depends on your setup and brand. I have 2 separate systems for fridge and freezer and I paid about $3,600 for all the hardware. I’m assuming yours is a holding plate system. It will be hard for a DC compressor to efficiently freeze most holding plates, even the big BD-80. An evaporator plate system with a smaller compressor would probably be more efficient and you would gain back some space,in the box vs a holding plate. For max efficiency, the compressor should run at it’s slowest speed for 50 min of every hour roughly. Don’t get too hung up on brands, Danfoss makes all the DC compressors no matter who the vendor is. The main choice will be capacity and air cooled vs water cooled condensor. Some, like Frigoboat have a passive water cooling (keel cooler) vs pump driven as well. I’m not an expert, but have gone through it all and looked at all the options if you have any questions.