refrigeration in the PNW

B

bridma

New member
I certainly understand the need for refrigeration in warmer climes but up here in the PNW, I think outside the box.
I kept all the usual fridge stuff in the bilge under the dining table. A lettuce stayed fresh for a week so I figured most other foods for a week supply would be ok, and it was. I prefer not to drink REAL beer out of the fridge, spoils the taste. Me being of English heritage, we like our beer cool at cellar temperature, 59 degrees. The bilge gets pretty close to that.
It was rare that we would be out on the water for over a week without going ashore and stocking up, so over stocking and then throwing away was not an issue.
The downside is no ice. But as I have never had ice in a drink it was not an issue for me. The cost of alcohol these days I could never get my head around watering it down! I kept my whiskey in the bilge and the missus her Baileys and it was fine.

Martin.
 
40*F is the max recommended refrigeration temperature for items which need refrigeration to prevent spoiling. Many vegetables will last prolonged times outside of refrigeration--for example cabbage will last a month.

If you are thinking of not refrigerating meats, then there is a real risk. The early cruising boats never had any refrigeration. Much of the "canid food" was home canned.
 
Bob makes a good point about meat. In my case I don't remember storing uncooked meat in the bilge for longer than 3 days, so was not an issue for us.
Take heed of what Bob says and act accordingly.

Martin.
 
I'm thinking that Martin just didn't get out of Desolation sound :wink: much. I don't think I ever saw my "cooler" temp above 52, ever.

My cruising in the BC waters, and in Puget sound both have been all without refrigeration or ICE or even a cooler. I actually need to give Martin credit for starting me to think that way. That compartment under the port side seat or/and under the foot position there has been my "fridge" for years. I keep a remote thermometer there to make sure my yogurt, cabbage, cheese, pop and chocolate stay just right. It reads between 40 to about 47 mostly. There are some places, the ends of some of the long inlets, or middle of Desolation Sound where it runs the high end of that range, but that is not often or for long. I would say the average temp is about 44. I don't carry meat ( I have had Turkey Jerky a few times but not any more, Long story,) or milk and very little cheese.

Harvey
SleepyC:moon

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Good to hear from you Harvey. When up in Desolation, or anywhere for that matter, the Fleet Admiral insisted on going ashore at least once a week for a shower and catch up on emails. So food remained pretty fresh.
Now if I were boating solo, it would be a little different!

Your post on getting the vaccination was interesting. Good for you and stay safe. In Canada we are experiencing distribution problems but it is what it is. My age group has been told to expect vaccination in May, so still a waiting game for me.

Martin.
 
Me being of English heritage, we like our beer cool at cellar temperature, 59 degrees. The bilge gets pretty close to that.
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I'll agree with you on that, even though I am of German heritage and I do like my beer a little colder than you do, I don't like to freezing cold beer like our southern neighbours often do. Mind you, sometimes that is the only way to drink some of that stuff. When I go out on the boat I limit my alcohol, so I prefer to go for quality over quantity, so I go out and buy the good stuff.

We don't have a fridge, but we have recently switched over these new super coolers. I have a Pelican 65 litre and and Yeti 45 litre. They need very little ice and with good planning they can easily last more than a week without the milk going bad. Lots of stuff goes under the floor lockers. I do carry some meat, but also preserved meats. I also plan on eating the fish I try to catch, but with my fishing skills, this often means sculpin or cat fish instead of salmon. So the canned and dried stuff gets eaten. Most of the ice we carry is usable, I freeze milk, fruit juice and drinking water. Almost everything like meat goes into the cooler frozen.
 
Martin, we will be doing without the ice chest too on our next SE Alaska cruise. Switching to dried PEAK brand milk with meat & similar products canned in quantities single or two servings without left overs. We are switching all bread to “Sailor Boy”, which stores almost indefinitely. It’s always been difficult to obtain ice on extended periods away from the marinas & the weight of packing ice from the store to a dock far out in the Marina, a pain.

We’ve made some cruises before without the ice chest & though handy if staying around a Marina, not really missed when on a extended cruise where cooler weather is the norm.

Jay
 
After reading many past C-Brats threads about keeping food cool/frozen for extended cruises, I decided to splurge on an Iceco VL45 fridge/freezer.

This will allow us to freeze "blue ice" for swapping into the cooler, and also take frozen food, and make ice cubes in small silicone trays.

The unit arrived 2 days ago, and I am in the process of doing system integration testing at home with a Renogy 100ah AGM battery, BMV-712 monitor, and a VMAX 20 amp charger.

My plans are to bring the boat home from storage the day before a trip and run the freezer on the charger overnight. The AGM will run the freezer while towing. The Evinrude will charge the AGM while cruising via a manual isolation switch.

I also bought an Acopower 120 watt foldable solar panel system which I can deploy while on the hook.
 
I totally respect the folks who live simply on their boats and make due perfectly well with simple solutions or careful planning or a combination of both. We have done a few multiday trips using the simple approach, but kept leaning generally in the direction of optimizing the option of having reliable cold food storage.

After 4+ years of use and well over 100 nights aboard our 19 using the system below, We are still completely happy with the results of our endless ice system.

We use the smallest Engel MD14F freezer model for freezing 15 Fiji brand squarish pint bottles. They all fit perfectly in the unit and it keeps them solidly frozen in trade for amps of course. We put 1-3 (depending on outside temps or desired cooling speed)of the bottles in each of our Coleman 40qt cooler seats in the cockpit and swap them out each morning for fresh frozen bottles in the freezer. We use one for a layer of drinks with breads on top, and the other for other fridge type items. And carry extra drinks outside the cooler that we can drop in to cool down as we go through them. The extra bottles not used in the little freezer, serve as a frozen base to speed the freezing of thawed bottles, and we have also had friends running out of ice take a few for their needs over the years, and because they are just water bottles, we don't need to worry about getting them back. (we can make due with about 8 bottles, so nearly half of them are expendable if needed)

The space where is sits under the seat is not perfectly vented, so the unit runs a little harder in warm weather, but it still has no trouble freezing the bottles. The extra power draw is why we put the solar panels on the roof. That modest 50 watts of solar covers roughly half the power required by the freezer and was well worth it. I even built an additional, portable 100 watt extension (goes on top rack) to use for trips in warmer weather and no shore power plus low levels of boat running time.

Our Lake Roosevelt summer trips tend to play out like that.

We love the freezer after over 4 years use and would not go back to coolers and loose ice. We love the coolers staying cold AND dry!

Our next limiting factor is fuel, as we carry plenty of water jugs under the forward most berth compartment.

http://www.c-brats.com/modules.php?set_ ... _album.php

Greg
 
Greg, Good to see you here and thanks for the reminder that you really do this refrig business right. Thanks and stay safe.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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Greg, I thought maybe you had boated off the edge of the earth.

Something that really helps with storage of produce is evaporative cooling. Gunny sacks are kind of rare nowadays, but nice to have. Coffee beans come in them, but those are too big. I have a few that are much smaller and I horde them. Put produce in a plastic bag (most doesn't like saltwater) and then into the gunny sack. Dip in water and stash someplace out of the sun. Even on a scorching 75 degree day in Seattle, it will stay in the low 50's.

I still have some vacuum bagged Sailor Boy pilot bread from a few years ago. Can't go bad 'cause it never was really good.

Mark
 
Still here and good tip about evaporative cooling. Saves me a lot of suffering in the form of a specialized vest when I am motorcycling in hot conditions.

The not so little teenager in the house has been cutting into our boating for a couple of years now, because she has her own passions, and we indulge her too much. We still have the boat of course and have been out as recently as December for an overnight in Pt Townsend. We have been busy off-roading for the last year in an elaborate family UTV experiment (over now), plus tons of moto-travel for me and some hiking together of course.

We do use the lower spaces of the 19 for some extra food storage but the bulk of the cabin storage is not sealed up quite like the 22, so it does not stay cool, simply out of the sun. After trying it once, I never did get more of the pilot bread. So many other packaged carb options these days.

Counting down the months till retirement, 41, which is still too many.

The crew on Rim island a few months ago,

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Cq6G5n5hLr6NGtZ19

Greg
 
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