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Jere Lull

In article om,
wrote:

I'm building a 26 foot pilothouse sloop and the plans call for a
large icebox. My experience doing the kind of cruising I expect to
do on this boat is that finding ice consumes a lot of time, it
doesn't last long, it takes up a lot of space, and the food items can
get soggy if I am doing any hard sailing. I have noticed that
Fisheries Supply in Seattle sells "conversion kits" for converting
ice boxes to 12 VDC refrigerator. This seems like a sensible choice,
and might even be good to build in right from the start. Does anyone
have experience with these kits or any kind of application other than
a drop in box? I am thinking that with 4" polyurethane foam that I'll
be able to handle the power consumption with a pair of Grp 31
batteries. Does this seem reasonable?

We have about the same size boat, a pair of 31s, and an icebox I built
(pics in Xan's "cabin" page:
http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/Cabin.html)

We found our best bang for the buck (and time) is ice in a boat as
small as ours. Though I could insulate the area some more, we still can
keep a single block of ice going for 3-4 days when it's 95-100 out.
That depends on how many warm cans we exchange for cold during the
period, of course.

We often park out in the boonies for a week or so. Just before, we put
a second block in and enjoy our *quiet* anchorage for the duration. We
also enjoyed using only 21 gallons of diesel in the past two seasons,
about 130 days away from the dock.

Adding sufficient power to run even the 12 VDC boxes would mean easily
twice the battery capacity, lots more solar or a bigger fuel tank, and
more space for the box or less capacity.

--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
Xan's NEW Pages: http://web.mac.com/jerelull/iWeb/Xan/
Our BVI FAQs (290+ pics) http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/