Icebox Organization

[reedbr]

I'm prepping for a cruise and one of the problems I have always had is icebox organization.  When you pack an icebox for 5 people for a week, it is full.  Those same people can also easily go through 15 drinks a day, especially if it is hot.  The problem is that if you take a cold drink out and put a warm drink in as we do, it should go lower in the box. Good luck getting lower in a packed box.  Also, if you pull out a 2-liter bottle or heaven forbid a milk jug, everything falls into the open hole and all organization is lost.   

To combat this, I have been thinking of a way to divide the icebox into two sections for drinks and food.  If I worked it right, I might even be able to use more of the dead space at the very bottom (under the lowest horizontal divider).  One thought was to install vertical PVC tubes where I could stack 4 or five cans vertically.  Another was a larger diameter tube to use with 2-liter bottles.  Either option would require cutting holes in the tube for ventilation and a way to pull the lower bottles/cans to the top.

Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong.  Somebody else here must have run into the same issue.  Any other ideas to divide the icebox vertically and not horizontally?  Or even ideas to keep drinks out of the general (food) population and prevent the disappearing hole syndrome?

Any help or pics are appreciated.

[Ken Juul]

I keep the cold drinks in a cooler with ice.  Even when I am cruising I plan on everyother night at a marina (keeps the admiral happy) so I can always replace the melting ice.  Cooler is either in the cockpit or on the floor in the aft cabin.

I have build a horizontal shelf in the front half of the refrig (ice box).  Put a frozen gallon water jug under the shelf to ease the load on the battery and stack end of the week or little demand object around the jug.  Condiments, cheeses, lunch meats and other small items go in various stackable baskets on the shelf.  Larger items like your 2 litter bottles, the admirals white wine, etc go in the aft "full size portion of the box.  Yes everytiime something comes out, at least two other items will need to come out before it will all go back in.  I place things I want to keep frozen between the baskets and the cold plates.  Hamburger, chops, shrimp, if it goes in frozen and stays against the cold plate will usually stay frozen for 3 or 4 days.

It is normally just the two of us on board, with kids your problem will be magnified, but doable.

[Michael Algase]

Similar Comment -

We have a Coleman 48 quart cooler, and it fits snugly across the cockpit floor just in front of the pedestal.  Doesn't slide around when sailing when we put it there.  You do have to move it to get access to the port storage locker, but for us that is docklines and power cords - once per docking event.  I generally leave the drain closed to perserve thermal mass, but you could easily leave it open, it drains out the scuppers, and just refill with ice.  It is also a convenient bridge for our small dog to walk from high side to low side without jumping around, so he likes it too!  Take a measurement, and you may also find something close to the right dimension to fit between the cockpit seats.

If you place it lengthwise, it slides around under sail, but is easier to drain and access the handles to move it.

With two children and two adults, whenever we are on the boat, the drinks go in there, and the icebox is for food.  When we leave to go home for the week, we use the cooler for the food transport, and keep the beverages cool in the icebox (I have a 12V power supply that drives the refrigeration when on shore power, so it is of no consequence to the house bank, and I don't have to leave a charger running).

Michael

[Ron Hill]

Brian : Most of us have learned to keep the lid of the fridge closed as much as possible and keep the thermal pad on top.  You can buy a 48/52 quart from Igloo or Colman that advertise 5 days at 90 degrees outside air temp.  It does pretty well keeping the drinks cold and the fridge lid closed.

I finally convinced my crew that to load it - use 1  10lb block and 2  8 lb bags of cubes.  The block keeps items colder and longer than just cubes.  If you stop at a marina it's easy to get another bag of cubes to add. 
We periodically put in a cube tray from the fridge and add cooler water to the second tray so it'll refreeze overnight. 

In case you're wondering, I came up with the way we keep drinks cold after trying MANY different ways over 18 years of cruising 6 weeks in the spring and 6 weeks in the fall.    

[Stu Jackson]

I understand the question of this being about icebox organization per se, but I'll chime in with my usual "electrical system" approach.     What, ya thought you could get away with it?

Assuming that you have a good sized house bank, good alternator / regulator or plug in nightly, it's about keeping things cold and handy.  OK, the electrical nonsense is over 

For our cruises, we, too, start out with a full box.  Our solution has been to keep lighter material on the top shelf so it's relatively easy to move.  Our top shelf is cut in half, athwartships direction, so stuff can be moved over to get to other stuff on the bottom level.  We keep a few drinks on the top level, but the rest out in the aft cabin or stored in one of the shelves we built in both previous hanging lockers.  In order to keep the renewable and needed drinks cool, whoever takes a cold one out puts another one into the top of the evaporator section.  It gets cold in half an hour and then can be moved to anywhere else in the box.

This works for two regularly thoughtful adults, but may not work for gaggles of kids, if yours are anything like ours! 

[Jeff_McKinney]

Just got back from a week of flogging around the middle Chesapeake. I mostly used Ron's approach with the biggish ice chest for fluids, stuck pre-chilled drink containers in the cooler at home, then added a 10 lb block of ice at the marina just prior to departure. It lasted 2 days in 90+ heat, etc.

I tried securing it in the cockpit, but it always seemed to be underfoot. When the wind hit 16+ knots closehauled it went below, lashed to the cabin table post in the U-shaped area & it stayed there for the duration. The nice part of that method is draining the water into the bilge is a snap. That location also reduces the heat load on the box & the ice lasts longer. 

[reedbr]

I tried a temporary solution to see if I liked it.  It worked well for me during our week trip, so I'll figure how to make this more permanent:

http://users.erols.com/reedbr/temp/icebox_divider.JPG

If you look in the center of the icebox you will see a white divider of 3/4" closed-cell foam purchased at Home Depot.  About 5 minutes before I packed the icebox I carved it to the exact shape I wanted and taped it to the bottom and two sides (white duct tape, very nautical looking!).  This basically broke my icebox into two compartments.  The "food" side is forward, the drink side is aft and closest to the cooling element.  The divider did not go all the way to the bottom.  It stopped at the lowest shelf.

This divider gave me the ability to pull and replace drinks without affecting the food side and vice-versa.  2 liter bottles and a 1/2 gallon of milk fit nicely between the element and the foam divider.  When pulling a big bottle, smaller bottles would sometimes settle into the hole, but only one or two so it was easy to manage.  The food side had an upper and lower shelf, and every couple of days I would pull stuff to the top for the next days meals.  This was a 1-week trip with 5 people aboard and it worked better than I thought it would.

I also tried keeping a small drink cooler, keeping it cold with 1-liter bottles of ice I would freeze in the icebox and swap daily.  This ended up being more of a pain and fell out of use after only a couple days.  The divided icebox kept up with our demands so that's the system I'll stick with.  I'll make a more permanent divider out of plexi or wood using the foam as my template.

By the way, my stock electrical system (4 year old wet cell 4D's (x2), stock alternator, stock flyback charger) run all week in the "both" position kept up with my demands.  I was on the hook every night except one in Crisfield, MD.  The diesel started easily every morning and usually ran a minimum of two hours every day (usually one hour out and one hour in).  From memory I think I used about 1/2 tank of fuel for the week running about 20 hours.  I'll have to double-check that. 

I also logged a new record for the boat, 9.1 knots running down some roller coaster waves on a beam reach around Smith Point, Virginia.  That is on a dirty bottom (last cleaned spring 2005) with an encrusted three-blade prop.  Poor boat....poor crew.  May they all someday forgive me!

[kdexter]

Just returned from a 17 day cruise - well, several days were actually spent on a mooring at Block Island - our first trip on our 89 Catalina 34.  Had a huge fridge on our 33 Pearson, so took some planning to pack the Catalina's.  I bought white plastic baskets (I think Sterilite, but might have been Rubbbermaid).  One larger basket that sits on top rack, a smaller for bottom rack.  They worked well, although the large one was a bit tricky to remove, but not too bad.  Could actually snake my had down to reach the bottom basket and find the needed items using "Braille".  A quart of milk and soda or beer cans stacked fit well between the baskets and freezer box.  The freezer box is located on the aft end of the fridge - would have been more convenient at other end - oh well.  One thing I did this year was use some freezer packs (kind that come with Omaha Steaks) in a drink cooler.  Had two - froze one, used other in drink cooler, switched as necessary - worked pretty well. As I used up frozen food, I stuck a few drink cans in freezer for a bit before adding to drink cooler.  I also used a collapsible cooler for cantelope, apples, and other fresh fruits and veggies bought at home (cheaper!).  Put the left over hunk of ice when I bought a new block in fruit cooler and in drink cooler.  When fresh fruit is gone, fold up cooler for storage.  Then, as the cruise is waning, there is no fresh/frozen food left and plenty of space for drinks!!  I also used a block of ice to help reduce power consumption. My husband had "faux davits" made on which to mount an 85 watt solar panel.  Worked well.