WAY COOL! How to custom-build a portable fridge/freezer into a cruising yacht
What do you do when there’s no ‘off-the-shelf solution to a problem on your boat?
Well, if you’re anything like us, you design and build one yourself!
For years, we’ve been dragging around a portable Waeco/Dometic fridge-freezer as an extension to our built-in refrigeration that helps us significantly extend our cruising range.
The problem is, we’ve never really had anywhere suitable to put it.
At one point it lived under the Nav Station but that meant you couldn’t sit at the chart table because there was nowhere to put your feet.
More recently it’s been sitting on the cabin sole in the saloon where the dinette would ordinarily be.
While there’s been no table that’s been super handy from an access point of view, but obviously it was never going to be a long-term solution – when we finish renovating the saloon we do plan on reinstalling a dinette of some sort.
So when we started renovating our 'Hobbit Hole' (aka companionway between the aft cabin and saloon), we thought “this is it”. The initial measurements matched, but, like all boat jobs, there were a few challenges to overcome.
Firstly, we knew that when we re-installed all the built-in shelving and a headliner in this alcove, there wasn’t going to be enough space to remove the fridge lid.
Obviously a 50-Litre fridge full of frozen food is going to be too heavy to lift in and out so we were going to need some sort of sliding tray, like the ones you can buy for camper vans and RV’s, (e.g. this one from BCF:
https://www.bcf.com.au/p/xtm-fridge-slide-with-table-small/673435.html
which features in the video)
The trouble with all the off-the-shelf units we found is that none of them fit. These days bigger is supposedly better and everything we looked at was way too large for our humble Hobbit Hole.
It quickly became apparent that we were also going to need a distinctly marinised version of a sliding tray - one that we could lock in place when we’d be sailing, especially with the boat heeled to port.
The other thing about these fridges is that in high temperatures and humidity (like we get here in northern Australia in summer), they produce a lot of condensation. You can of course buy insulation jackets for them, but in our experience that doesn’t completely solve the problem and in fact it sometimes creates another one, in the form of mould.
So, what we needed was: a slide-out system, complete with condensation drainage, and a locking mechanism, all of which clearly needed to be custom-built.
Come back in time with us, and we’ll show you how we did it…
And thanks as always for watching!!
(Link to the drawer slides we used for anyone looking to do this themselves: https://www.bunnings.com.au/goliath-heavy-duty-drawer-slide-pair-500mm_p4020990)
Things we’ve added to this video and want to give credit to:
Music via www.storyblocks.com
👇🏻
Humans Win (formerly Lance Conrad) / Explorer
Isha Love / Feel so Good (Band Version)
Media Music Group / A Playful Walk in Paris (Cooking, Comedy and Travel)
Media Music Group / New Orleans Mardi Gras Tuba and Street Beat Drums
Volodymyr Piddubnyk / Comedy Background Detective Cartoon
Music via www.epidemicsound.com
👇🏻
Little Island Leap / Blue Bora Baby - https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/E86m45oWMT/
Alvaro Antin / Heading for the Neon Lights - https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/shPazldXBM/
Chalalatas / Mustaches and Martinis - https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/MxAL0QOgK8/
J.F. Gloss / Getting in the Mood - https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/0IKhiVmTep/
Mac Taboel / Bienvenue Mon Amour - https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/3H49hhCTlw/
The Sailing Adventures of Brilliant II
Join the Smallwoods - Sharon, Julian, Josh, and Pepe (the Blue Burmese) - aboard Sailing Vessel Brilliant II. Brilliant II is a Kelly Peterson 44, built in 1978. Julian and Sharon bought the boat in Phuket, Thailand, in 2005, and sailed her slowly back to Sydney, Australia. Over the next five years they lived aboard and sailed the coasts of New South Wales and Queensland. They are currently based in the Whitsundays, Queensland, where Josh was born in 2010. In 2021 they began a refit of the water-damaged interior (which had needed doing since the start!), while continuing to sail on mini-adventures north and south of their home port. Sharon is a photojournalist by trade, but realising YouTube is a thing has started creating videos too. You can also follow their adventures on Instagram at @shazatsea.
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