How not to load your boat freezer

Six weeks. We were provisioned for at least six weeks. Cordelie showed about a half inch of bottom paint, and we were ready to go. We'd just spent three days near Campbell River, making run after run to various suppliers as we'd find just a little more space to pack away some more cans of green beans. The last run was the fresh meat and veggies, and then we were off.

Let me start by saying that while boneless chicken breasts, cuts of beef and pork, and hamburger seem to be what you'd call solid, they are in fact liquid. When you pour them in a vertical freezer, despite leaving space between the bags, they settle into a continuous mass. So I froze that mass.

The next day we took off for our first anchorage, and as Kim took the dog to shore, I decided to get out some meat for the BBQ. What I found in the freezer, instead of my individually packed baggies of meat, was a 3-D jigsaw puzzle that had swollen to fit the inside of the freezer precisely. Nothing was coming out, but there was ground beef right at the top, and I realized that if I could just carve out the ground beef, it would be like a keystone, and everything else would be accessible. I very delicately set to work sawing at the ground beef with a steak knife. Very carefully removing a chunk at a time.

I can tell you a face full of refrigerant can be quite a sudden shock, whereas realizing you have a fridge and freezer full of soon-to-be-rotting food is more of a slow, sickening, evolving feeling. Having your wife stuck on shore, trying to drag 120 lbs of dinghy down the beach as the tide rapidly goes out, so that you have time to figure out the best course of action? As they say: priceless.

By the time Kim had pulled the outboard and tank off, floated the dinghy, put the motor and tank back on, and gotten the dog in the boat, she was not in the best mood to hear about how “the funniest thing just happened.” Luckily, I had a plan of sorts, which was to get help from somebody who might have a real plan. First we had to pull up anchor to find cell reception, which we did.

After calling several service places within 100 miles, we were looking at a week wait for parts (meaning 2) and $1,000+. Wanting to spend neither, we decided we had nothing to lose and went to work on the evaporator and the nice, new little hole in it. We prepped the aluminum with sand paper, waited until it had quit leaking the oily refrigerant (several hours – as it heated up, it kept seeping), cleaned it with acetone, and put a big gob of epoxy (marine-tex) on it.

We pulled into an anchorage near a store, and bought two styrofoam ice chests and a bunch of ice. Hoping the food would last. Then we began calling refrigeration people in the area. The second guy we talked to said he'd worked on fishing boats for years, and would be happy to come by and try to recharge our system, because he lived on the island where we were anchored anyway! I asked him if he thought my repair would hold, and he said “why wouldn't it?” Good fishing-boat-guy answer!

We tied up to a rickety dock, and he met us right on time with a big smile. He crawled into the “refrigeration access” at the foot end of one sea berth, while I tried to weigh the refrigerant tank on dock with a digital scale. When he figured we had enough in, he switched the compressor on, and cold she went! The service charge? $40.

So about 20 hours after poking a hole in my refrigerator, thanks to a very nice guy and some good luck, we were back under way. Must've been a good repair, 'cause there were no leaks then, and still no leaks. Most importantly, we didn't lose two weeks, and I still have my $1000.

The lessons of this story? Don't overload your freezer – leave expansion space, don't use sharp objects around your evaporator, and don't assume you can't at least try to fix something yourself, even if you are the demoralized idiot who broke it in the first place.

Oh, and also keep an eye on the tide when you bring the dog to shore!