The cold weather in February 2018
Here are some more pictures of the current weather in the Netherlands.
A custom build-in fridge and freezer box with plywood, epoxy and polyurethane foam – episode 1
Ice, rain and snow
As you can see there were some snowy days here in the Netherlands. But nevertheless work continued aboard the Seadog.
On the starboard side some of the holes that were made to access the through hull bolts were patched up. And this time two hose connectors were laminated at starboard and port side at the back of the ship to allow excess rainwater to flow out of that hallow space in the top of the hull. Which are connected right into the drainage pipes underneath the waterline. Also all hoses aboard the entire ship have now have been replaced by new hoses with stainless steel hose clamps. Plus, the storage lockers at the back of the ship finally got there much-needed cleanup as well.
The building of the custom fridge / freezer has not halted, but only had some minor progress in favour of the above tasks. All the needed supplies are now aboard, so hopefully more on this subject in the next post.
Building a custom fridge box inside a sailboat: Step 1 – Preparations
This past week preparations were made for building a new fridge box inside the boat. There has always been a big empty space beneath the kitchen counter that has been hard to reach ever since the stairs were moved there. The fridge box will be placed in that empty space and will be accessible from the top. Although in this case there really was no other option, it actually always a good idea to have the fridge opening at the top. This way the cool air inside the box will not fall out when you open the door. The plan is to insulate the fridge with a minimum of 10 cm insulation to further increase the efficiency of the fridge box. In some places even more insulation will be used, especially in the small space where the freezing section will be.
To compensate for the immense thickness of insulation there will need to be a lot of empty space available underneath the kitchen counter. Therefor all unneeded planks and beams were removed and some much-needed cleaning and painting was done to prepare this space for the placement of the new fridge box.
The holes that were made to access some of the bolts that go through the hull of the boat were also closed off again. Plus some of the 230 volt wiring was redone now that those parts were easy to access.
The cooling unit used to cool the fridge box will be the Isotherm 3251 ASU Self-Pumping Water-Cooled Component System which is one of the most efficient systems out there, while also being near silent (no spinning fan). With this system the sea water-cooled skin fitting/heat exchanger replaces the air-cooled condenser and cooling fan that normal systems use. The through-hull fitting of the kitchen sink was replaced with this special fitting last month when the boat was on the hard (out of the water).
The building of the actual fridge box will follow in an upcoming post. Till then, fair winds and following seas…