Keeping food, drink and people cool…
As I write this post, we have our gen set running to charge our house batteries, something that we do each morning. Because that task takes only a fraction of the generator’s output, we also have one of the boat’s three air conditioners running. I know, luxury. The thing is, keeping food, drink and people cool on this boat is a major task for us, and when we have charter guests on board, it’s critical!
Two charters ago we had one of our air con units stop working the day before we were to have guests arrive. The unit was giving us a high pressure error which I’ve come to learn typically means that there is an issue with it not receiving enough cooling water. I tried all that I knew to do, including repeatedly bleeding air from the lines. I even swapped the cooling water pump but that didn’t fix the issue either. I ultimately had to call in the pros and after running a few tests, they swapped out a faulty pressure sensor. Oh well, I tried.
On the keeping-food-and-drink-cool front, we just had arrive new gaskets for our fridge and freezer doors. Believe it or not, we had to have them custom made and shipped to us all the way from South Africa! Robertson and Caine, the manufacturer of Leopard Catamarans, no longer deals with the company that made our cooling boxes so we needed to deal with the refrigeration company direct. The process of getting the new gaskets was relatively painless although it did require one or two phone calls to Africa to make it happen.
Remember the Engel cooler that we purchased back in April? IT ROCKS! That cooler is amazingly efficient. We are presently using it as a freezer and it keeps both ice and ice cream solid. We highly recommend it!
I’ve chartered numerous Moorings R&C cats and found the fridge design lacking – in my opinion.
The main problem with that the units I’ve encountered is poor ventilation. These units have been 12 V air cooled . . which I like better than engine driven holding plate systems due to simplicity and the fact that they can be kept running with solar panels and not the main engine.
However, in these Moorings/R&C installations the compressor has been placed inside a poorly ventilated cabinet. Therefore, the heat that is extracted has no where to go and this causes the cabinet to become heated and lose efficiency.
Were I to own one of these boats the first thing I would do to improve the fridge is add some quiet forced air ventilation to the space in which the compressor is located.
Maybe this isn’t the situation on your 46, but just thought I’d mention it as a possible improvement idea.
It definitely could be an issue.
On the “keeping people cool” subject do you run the air conditioners at night during sleeping times? Or just use open hatches?
Trying to sleep when its “hot and sticky” just isn’t any fun for those of us from Colorado!
We leave that up to the guests. When it’s just the two of us on board we do not run the AC all night.
We chartered a 46′ R&C last month from Footloose in the BVI.
We ran the genset and three zone AC all night. (We were from Fla and Ga). AC actually too cold the first night, till I learned the temp gage was behind that little door. (Hint figure that out before dinner, drinks, wine, drinks, etc)
Fridge and freezer worked great, we froze big water bottles (use as ice in drink cooler the next day). And almost froze the eggs in the fridge!
During the very thorough boat briefing I asked about bleeding the lines and was shown the valves. Did get a hi ps indicator a couple of times.
New gaskets can’t hurt…for sure.
Good to hear that your systems were working.